There Can Be Only One Winner
by Clare
Summary: The story of Ruth, a teenaged girl from District 9 who has been chosen as a tribute in the 44th Hunger Games. Twenty-four enter the arena, but only one can leave alive. Rated for violence.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

It was an annual ritual which no-one in the districts enjoyed, a ritual imposed on them as punishment for the attempt, nearly two generations ago, to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone in Panem knew the story of how the districts rose up, only for the rebellion to be crushed, resulting in the destruction of District 13 and the creation of the Treaty of Treason. This Treaty, as every man, woman and child in the districts knew only too well, decreed that, once every year, each district must send one male and one female between the ages of twelve and eighteen to serve as tributes in the Hunger Games.

Ruth stood in the roped-off area with the rest of the fifteen-year-olds who lived in District 9, sixteen-, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds in front of them and twelve-, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds behind. All of them were waiting anxiously to hear which of them would have their names drawn from the reaping balls, meaning they would face almost certain death in whatever arena the Gamemakers had dreamed up this year. For that was what the Hunger Games were all about, forcing youngsters to fight to the death on live TV, thereby reminding the people of Panem that the Capitol had the power of life and death over all of them. And, if your fellow tributes didn't get you, the chances were some trick of the Gamemakers would.

Now, Septima Trott, District 9's flamboyant escort, was tottering towards the reaping balls on her ridiculously high heels. Like all citizens of the Capitol, she liked to look as outrageous as she could, favouring mint green hair with lips to match and dressing as garishly as possible; today, she was wearing a shocking pink dress which clashed violently with her bright red shoes. And, like all citizens of the Capitol, she saw the Hunger Games as a form of entertainment and nothing more. She gave no thought to the fact that, in the last forty-three Games, nearly a thousand young people had died in the name of that "entertainment", nor that at least one of those whose names she was about to call would soon be joining the list of dead tributes.

"And, now, the moment you've all been waiting for . . ." She paused for an imaginary drum roll, then reached into the ball containing the names of every twelve- to eighteen-year-old girl in District 9. "Which of you lucky ladies will get to go to the Capitol? Ooh, I can't wait!" As always, she made a big show of pulling out a single slip of paper, unfolding it and reading out the name written on it. "Ruth Waterhouse!"

* * *

Ruth felt as though she was in a dream, a bad dream from which she would soon awaken. None of it felt real. The Waterhouses were one of the better-off families in District 9, so neither Ruth nor her older sister, Katie, had ever had any need to sign up for tesserae, the system which allowed youngsters to claim a year's supply of grain and oil for themselves and each member of their family in exchange for extra entries in the reaping ball. Some kids accumulated large numbers of entries in this way, though no-one knew what the record was. But Ruth only had the four entries allocated to all fifteen-year-olds; she had not needed any more. Nonetheless, her name had been called and, whether she wanted to or not, she had to step forward and walk onto that stage.

As she walked through the assembled youngsters, she held her head up high, determined to show those watching on their televisions in other districts that she was not afraid, even though she could feel her heart hammering in her chest. All eyes were on her, a teenaged girl with shoulder-length light brown hair, as she climbed the steps onto the stage and joined those already assembled there. The moment she was on the stage, Septima seized her hand in a vice-like grip and yanked her arm into the air.

"Your female tribute!" Septima cried in the over-excited way typical of the Capitol. "But do any of you . . ." She gazed meaningfully at the other girls of reaping age. " . . . think you stand a better chance? If so, step right up and volunteer!"

No-one moved, though this wasn't surprising. Under the rules of the reaping, once someone's name had been drawn, another eligible youngster of the same gender was allowed to volunteer as tribute in their place. However, while volunteers were common in Districts 1, 2 and 4, the districts where children began training for the Hunger Games almost as soon as they could walk, they were less so in other districts. Ruth was too young to remember the last time someone from District 9 had volunteered, but she had seen the Games in question repeated on television and knew the boy concerned had made it into the final six before being impaled on a spear wielded by the male tribute from District 2.

Septima cleared her throat as theatrically as possible. "Ahem! Since there are no volunteers, we must move right along and choose your male tribute." She reached into the other ball, the one containing the boys' names, and repeated her performance of a few minutes earlier. "Lukas Green!" A seventeen-year-old youth walked up to stand beside Ruth and Septima asked for volunteers from among the boys, who gave the same response as the girls.

As the mayor began to read the Treaty of Treason, Ruth found herself looking Lukas up and down. She knew his name, but he was, at best, a casual acquaintence; the only other thing she knew about him was that he had been taking tesserae since he was twelve, for himself, his widowed mother and four younger siblings. In his first year of eligibility, he had had as many entries in the reaping ball as the minimum allowed for eighteen-year-olds; now, at the age of seventeen, he had amassed forty-two entries, one of which had just been drawn. Soon, he, Ruth and twenty-two other tributes would be forced into a contest in which there could be only one winner, a contest in which defeat meant certain death.

The mayor finished speaking and directed Ruth and Lukas to shake hands. This they did, but formally, knowing they would soon be caught up in an inescapable fight to the death. When it came to the Hunger Games, you could not afford to get too friendly with your fellow tributes, not even your district partner. As the national anthem of Panem blared out, Septima addressed the crowd one last time. "Let's hear it for your tributes in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games - Ruth Waterhouse and Lukas Green!"

Obediently, every man, woman and child in District 9 applauded.

* * *

Demmie Waterhouse, or Demeter as she was known officially, had lived in fear of this moment ever since she became a mother, the moment when one of her daughters' names would be drawn from the reaping ball. Fortunately, Katie had turned nineteen at the beginning of the year, meaning she was now safe. But Ruth had not been so fortunate; out of the thousands of entries in the girls' ball, one of the four containing her name had been drawn. If only her luck could have held out for a few more years . . . But it hadn't and, as a result, Ruth was now sitting in District 9's Justice Building, saying goodbye to those she loved.

"I can't believe I'm sitting here," Demmie was saying, as she and Ruth sat side-by-side on the plush couch. Her husband, Neil, sat in a nearby armchair, seemingly unable to find the words to say what needed to be said, though he had given Ruth a hug when he and his wife came to say goodbye. The three of them were in one of the rooms in the Justice Building that had been reserved for this purpose. It was hard for Demmie and Neil to say farewell to their daughter, not knowing if the next time they saw Ruth in the flesh would be as a returning victor or as a corpse shipped back to District 9 in a simple wooden box. "I remember when they took your Aunt Blossom," Demmie added, referring to her younger sister who had been reaped at the age of thirteen during the Twenty-third Games.

For a moment, Demmie's eyes clouded over as she recalled watching helplessly as Blossom, seven years her junior, walked onto the stage. There had been nothing she could do; she was too old to volunteer and there was no way she could take her sister and run, not with the Peacekeepers watching. She had sat with Blossom in this very room, given her a length of pink ribbon as a district token . . . That same length of ribbon was now in a box in Demmie's wardrobe, returned to District 9 along with the body of its owner.

Ruth knew talking about Blossom still upset her mother. Talking about those who died in the Hunger Games was always upsetting, especially the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. As the youngest tributes, they were often quickly weeded out by their older competitors; only once in the history of the Games had a tribute younger than fourteen made it into the final three. Ruth reached out and squeezed Demmie's hand. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll do my best and, if that's not good enough, I'll just have to take a few of the other tributes down with me."

Demmie hugged her daughter close, wishing she could never let go, wishing she could protect her from the cruel system that had landed her in the position of having to kill or be killed. But, like all citizens of Panem, she was powerless against the Capitol and, as if to prove it, a Peacekeeper walked in at that moment and told Ruth's parents their time was up.

Reluctantly, Demmie let go. "Goodbye, Ruth," she said, turning to walk away before the girl could see the tears which had welled up in her eyes. It felt uncannily like the day, twenty-one years earlier, she had left Blossom to face her doom. Was Ruth about to face a similar fate? Demmie did not know, but she would find out in the next few weeks whether she liked it or not. She took one last look at her younger daughter, then left the room.

Before following his wife, Neil Waterhouse walked over to Ruth and shook her hand. "Good luck," he told her, though he knew the chances of her actually winning were slim. Out of forty-three previous victors, only two had come from District 9.

* * *

Katie came in with her husband, Alf Moore, whom she had married in this very building only a few weeks earlier. As was traditional at a District 9 wedding, Ruth had presented the couple with ears of wheat to symbolise the hope that their union would be a fruitful one, resulting in many children. Of course, the fear that at least one of those children might end up as a tribute was constantly present, but most parents tried not to think of that. Besides, in some of the poorer districts, many people died young even without the Hunger Games.

"So, the Hunger Games, huh?" Katie said, hiding her fears for her younger sister behind a mask of bravado. "Think you can win?"

Ruth could only reply with a non-committal shrug. She and Katie had always been open with each other and both knew there was little chance that Ruth could get through this alive. They had been watching the Games on television all their lives, albeit from the safety of Demmie's lap when they were very little and might feel the urge to seek comfort during the more violent moments, and knew how tough some of the tributes could be. Especially the ones from Districts 1, 2 and 4, the so-called Careers . . .

Katie reached into her pocket and pulled something out, handing it to Ruth. "Look, remember these?" she asked. "Remember how we used to make necklaces with them when we were kids?"

Ruth looked at the object in her hand; several beads had been threaded onto a piece of elastic, the ends of which had been tied together to form a bracelet. They came from a set which she and Katie had been given several years before and consisted of over a hundred wooden beads painted various colours. But neither of them had touched the beads for years - until now. As soon as the citizens of District 9 had been dismissed following the reaping, Katie had returned to her parents' house, found the box of beads in a cupboard and set to work making her sister a district token. The rules of the Hunger Games allowed tributes to wear or carry one small item from their districts in the arena, though anything which could be used as a weapon would be confiscated.

Ruth slipped the bracelet onto her left wrist, noting as she did so that all the beads were yellow. This reminded her of the vast fields of grain which grew in District 9, stretching for miles and miles. Grain was District 9's principal industry and nearly everyone was involved in some way, from children employed to scare the birds off the seeds to those who owned the vast granaries. Ruth's father owned one of the largest granaries in the district, but the money he had made had not been enough to protect her from the reaping. Ruth felt tears well up in her eyes at the thought that she might never see her father again, but she quickly blinked them back. "Thanks," she said, managing a weak smile. Then, a thought occurred to her.

"Katie," she said, "will you and Alf do me a favour?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"Spot," Ruth replied. Spot was her small brown-and-white mongrel dog whom she had had ever since he was a puppy. "If I . . ." She found she couldn't say the word "die", as if uttering it when she was about to be sent to the Hunger Games would somehow make it come true. " . . . don't win, will you look after him?"

Katie nodded. "Of course I will." She wished she could have brought Spot with her, but dogs were not allowed inside the Justice Building, so it looked as though he might never see his mistress again. All she could do was hope that, if the worst happened, Spot would not pine too much; she had visions of him constantly waiting in vain for Ruth to return. But she had made a promise to look after the dog and she meant to keep it.

* * *

Before long, the same Peacekeeper who had dismissed Demmie and Neil came to tell Katie and Alf they had to leave. Tributes were allowed only an hour to say goodbye to all their loved ones before being taken to the station, from which they would travel to the Capitol by luxury train. As only officially sanctioned travel between districts was permitted, this would be the only chance most of them would have to see any part of Panem other than their home districts.

Ruth spent the remainder of the hour in the company of her closest friends from school. Dorcas Gray, whose older brother had been a tribute a few years earlier when a District 2 girl called Lyme won; Flora Sharpe, whose mother was the local dressmaker and had made Katie's wedding outfit; Elly Parker, who had two younger brothers, the older of whom had just been through his first reaping . . . Knowing she might never see them again, she tried to commit their faces to memory, only to find that thoughts of the Hunger Games and how one of the twenty-three cannon shots which would sound during the Games might signal her death kept intruding. It was almost a relief when the Peacekeeper came and told Ruth that her hour was up and she had to leave for the train station.

Soon, Ruth was sitting in the back of a car, along with Lukas who, like her, had just spent the last hour saying goodbye to his friends and family. It had been especially hard for him, since he had been the man of the family for the past five years, a role which would now fall to his ten-year-old brother, Lyndon. His father had died during one of District 9's hardest winters, leaving a widow with five young children; as well as Lyndon, Lukas had two sisters called Letty and Livia and another brother called Lance. And, with the money Mrs Green earned selling old clothes in the market barely enough to feed the family, it had been essential for Lukas to take tesserae. Letty, who was fourteen, had followed suit three years later, but Lyndon, Livia and Lance were not yet old enough.

But perhaps, even when they did reach reaping age, they wouldn't have to take such a risk. If he won the Games, Lukas would be rewarded with a home in District 9's Victor's Village and enough riches to ensure that, while his siblings would still not be able to escape the reaping, they would never have to take the gamble of adding their names into the draw extra times. Of course, that meant the girl sitting beside him would have to die, but he tried to avoid thinking of that.

* * *

Septima got out of the car first, followed by the two previous District 9 victors: a young woman named Thalia Ashe who had won ten years earlier and a grey-haired man named Ethan Blake, the victor in the Third Hunger Games. They would be acting as Lukas and Ruth's mentors, advising them on their strategies for the arena, coaching them for their interviews the night before the Games began, securing sponsorship for the two young tributes . . .

Ruth and Lukas got out of the car and Septima promptly steered them into the station. As no-one could travel beyond the boundaries of their own districts without official permission, there was no ticket booth, just a surly-looking Peacekeeper whose job was to check that anyone who attempted to enter the station had the proper authorisation to travel. Septima handed him a piece of paper which stated that their party consisted of two Hunger Games tributes and their escorts. Grunting, the Peacekeeper took the paper and examined it for a moment, before stamping it with the Capitol's seal and handing it back to Septima.

"All right. You're cleared," he said shortly, directing the five of them into the station.

Inside, the station was thronged with reporters, all of them jostling for position as they attempted to film the tributes. Several shouted questions at Lukas and Ruth, but Septima was used to this kind of thing, having been a district escort for over twenty years, and rebuffed the reporters by telling them they would have to "wait until interview night." She then led the party to where a brand new high-speed train stood waiting. Before they could board, however, they had to pose for photographs, as was customary when tributes were about to leave for the Capitol. Septima spent several minutes trying to sort everyone out and get herself into the most prominent position she could manage without overshadowing Ruth and Lukas. Finally satisfied, she told the tributes and their mentors to look at the camera. "Big smiles, everyone!" she cried, pulling back her lips to show off the teeth which she had recently had studded with real diamonds.

Though Ruth managed to smile for the camera, what she wanted to do more than anything was weep for those she might never see again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

As a granary-owner's daughter, Ruth had always enjoyed a slightly higher standard of living than some people in District 9, but nothing had prepared her for the opulance of the tribute train.

She stood in the carriage which had been designated as the female tribute's quarters, gazing at the panelled walls, the bed covered with a lace canopy, the drawers and cupboards filled with garments to fit all sizes. Septima had told her that she was free to wear anything she liked from the clothes provided, but Ruth had decided to stick with the pink floral print dress she had worn to the reaping. Yes, the grandeur was magnificent and, if she ignored the constant movement underfoot, she could imagine that she was in someone's house. Not one of the houses in District 9, where even the wealthiest residents did not live like this, but one of those in the Capitol that she had seen on television. But there was no escaping the fact that, out of the forty-three District 9 girls who had previously made this journey, only Thalia was still alive; the others, including her own aunt, had all perished in the Hunger Games.

Ruth wished she could live in a world where youngsters were not forced to slaughter each other for "entertainment", but she dared not voice such thoughts aloud. Doing so could land both herself and her immediate family in trouble; the Capitol's influence extended all over Panem and the Hunger Games were a key weapon in the oppression of the population. She recalled the story she had been told all her life about the rebellion and the Dark Days which followed, culminating in the destruction of District 13 and the creation of the Games in which she was now a tribute. Forcing the people in the districts to watch their sons and daughters kill each other was meant to be a punishment for the attempted revolution, but Ruth had never seen the logic in punishing people for something which had happened years before they were born.

She recalled another reaping, two years before Katie first became eligible. As the sixteen-year-old girl and fourteen-year-old boy whose names had been drawn were escorted into the Justice Building, she had turned to Demmie and said: "Mommy, why do those kids have to go to die? They haven't done anything wrong." Demmie had hurriedly hushed her and, as soon as they were alone, gave her a severe scolding, telling her she must never say such things again.

It was not until some years later that Ruth appreciated the reason for Demmie's anger. Any dissent against the Capitol, even an innocent remark by a six-year-old child, could lead to repercussions, including, or so it was rumoured, having the reaping rigged to ensure that relatives of anyone brave enough to speak out ended up in the arena. Demmie's fear had been that, unless Ruth learned to watch her tongue, someone would make sure that, in two years' time, the slip drawn from the girls' reaping ball contained the name Katie Waterhouse. But, though Ruth had not understood at the time, the memory of the reprimand was enough to remind her not to voice such thoughts aloud again.

Just then, a tap on the door brought Ruth back to the present. "Dinner's ready!" called Septima's Capitol-inflected voice, causing Ruth to sigh inwardly. Why, she wondered for the umpteenth time, did people in the Capitol have to speak in such an affected manner?

* * *

Ruth joined the rest of the party in a carriage which had been decked out to look like a posh dining room, complete with shining cutlery and fine china. She took a seat next to Lukas, who was eating a dish whose main ingredient seemed to consist of small pink worm-like objects. "Prawn cocktail," explained Thalia, who was sitting opposite Ruth. "Prawns courtesy of District 4," she added, refering to the district whose main industry was fishing.

Ruth had never eaten prawns before; District 9 was a long way from the coast and seafood was prohibitively expensive, even for her father. She tried a mouthful and, when she felt the unaccustomed texture on her tongue, was tempted to spit it straight back out. But she resisted the urge, knowing the Hunger Games were not called the Hunger Games for nothing.

As she ate, Ruth found herself looking at each of her fellow diners. She had seen Septima at reapings all her life, but had never seen the woman eat before and had to remind herself not to stare. Lukas, meanwhile, was talking to Ethan between mouthfuls, trying to get a few hints on how to survive in the arena. Ethan, as a victor in one of the earliest Hunger Games, had been alive during the Dark Days and was old enough to remember them. For a moment, Ruth was tempted to ask him what that period of Panem's history had been like, but she decided it might not be a good idea. She had tried to ask older people in District 9 that question before, only to get the same uninformative answer each time. "It was a bad time for Panem and it must never be repeated" - or words to that effect.

Instead, Ruth turned to Thalia, District 9's most recent Hunger Games victor. Thalia was in her twenties and wore a patch over her left eye, which had been gouged out in the final fight of the Thirty-fourth Hunger Games, the Games which Thalia had won after a hard-fought battle against the female tribute from District 2. Afterwards, Thalia had been whisked away from the arena to have her injuries patched up, but even the Capitol's best medics were unable to save her injured eye.

But, blind in one eye or not, Thalia was Ruth's mentor; it was her job to guide the girl tributes from District 9 through the Games. "So what sort of arena will I be facing?" Ruth ventured, wondering if it would be anything like last year when the tributes had been dumped in a frozen wasteland.

"You'll find out when you get there," replied Thalia, who had no more idea than Ruth. Only the Gamemakers were allowed to know in advance the sort of terrain that would form the arena. It might be a vast desert, or a forest, or a wasteland littered with rocks - you never knew. Unless, of course, you happened to be a Gamemaker . . .

The prawn cocktail was followed by beef steak and seasonal vegetables, then a dish which Septima called raspberry pavlova, though she did not know where the name had come from, only that it dated back to a time long before the Dark Days when Panem was still called North America. Afterwards, Lukas and Ruth suffering from a touch of indigestion from having eaten food that was richer than they were used to, the party went into another carriage to watch the televised recap of the reapings.

* * *

The reapings from each district were always broadcast live throughout the day, but only the people in the Capitol could actually watch the events on television as they unfolded. Their young people did not have to face the prospect of having their names drawn from a reaping ball. In the districts, however, everyone had to be in the main square, the traditional location for reapings, by the appointed time and only serious illness (which meant you had to be completely bed-ridden) was accepted as an excuse for non-attendance. For that reason, a recording of the reapings was broadcast in the evening, allowing people their first glimpse of the tributes from other districts.

As always, the name of the female tribute from District 1 was announced first. "Sequin Maxwell!" called a man who had dyed his hair bright blue. A twelve-year-old girl in a white satin dress with a blue sash stepped forward and walked onto the stage, but the blue-haired man had barely opened his mouth to ask for volunteers before a girl of around Ruth's age emerged from the crowd and practically ran towards the stage.

"I wish to volunteer!" she declared, her cocky air and her eagerness to risk her life in the arena immediately marking her out as a Career.

"Splendid!" said the man with the blue hair. "And your name is . . . ?"

"Xanadu Keller." The girl flicked back her long fair hair, clearly imagining that she was already facing Caesar Flickerman for her pre-Games interview. As the name of District 1's male tribute, Jet Denton, was drawn, Ruth found herself wondering about the girl called Xanadu. Xanadu Keller - that surname sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place it and she didn't have time to think about it before Jet and Xanadu were escorted into their district's Justice Building and the coverage moved to District 2.

As was often the case, the tributes from District 2 were both volunteers, two tough-looking teens called Juno Bright and Gaius Adams. Freda Carrington and Watt Dewhurst were called from District 3, followed by the tributes from District 4, the last of the three Career districts; here, a seventeen-year-old girl called Marina Forbes was called, followed by a fifteen-year-old boy called Shaun Tate. Next were Jennie Ross and Vance Gregory of District 5, the home district of last year's victor, Rik Massey.

The tributes from District 6 (Sarah Nelson and Max Rhodes) were the youngest to be drawn so far, at thirteen and twelve years old respectively. Watching them mount the stage and seeing that no-one was willing to volunteer in their place, Ruth felt a pang of sorrow, made worse by the fact that she knew how Demmie felt about such young kids getting reaped. It brought back painful memories of Blossom, the aunt Ruth had, thanks to these cruel Games, never had a chance to meet. Blossom had been among the first to fall during her Games, though she had survived the initial bloodbath, and the odds of something similar happening to Sarah and Max were high.

Pine Branning and Forrest Parr were reaped from District 7, followed by Alice Weaver and Marc Hargreaves from 8. Then, it was District 9's turn and Ruth watched as Septima called first her name, then Lukas's, saw each of them walk to the stage in turn. She and Lukas still hadn't spoken to each other at length, but that was sure to change over the next few days; before the Games began, the tributes were housed in a tall building called the Training Centre, the parties from each district taking up one floor. During this period, Ruth and Lukas would spend a great deal of time together, though that would not alter the fact that at least one of them would die in the arena.

The tributes from District 10 were called Bessie Harper and Todd Thornton, while Till Drake and Harvey Watson represented 11. Last of all came District 12, the coal-mining district, the district which had traditionally fared worst in the Hunger Games. They had only won once, at the Seventeenth Games, in which their girl tribute, April Willis, was the only one of the last four tributes to escape a Gamemaker-engineered attack by deadly bat muttations. It was rare for District 12 not to lose at least one tribute in the bloodbath and they had not had a tribute make it to the final eight since the Twenty-ninth Games. This year's pair were a couple of scrawny fourteen-year-olds called Lorna Redmond and Kris Ogilvy, whose faces both bore the same expression of mute hopelessness. They knew the odds were against them.

* * *

The train would not reach the Capitol until the next morning, so Lukas and Ruth were packed off to bed as soon as the recap was over.

"So, what do you think?" Lukas asked, once they were in the corridor.

Ruth leaned against the wood-panelled wall, feeling the floor swaying beneath her feet. "About what?" she asked, realising this was the first time Lukas had addressed her directly since they left District 9. Not that they had had much to do with each other back home, though it was probably just as well considering where they were going.

"The other tributes. Think we stand a chance against them?"

Ruth had no idea how to answer that. As usual, the tributes came in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the powerfully built Gaius and Juno to Sarah and Max, both of whom were less than five feet tall. It hardly seemed sporting to pit youngsters of such widely differing levels of strength against each other, but, then again, the Hunger Games had never been intended as a fair competition, merely as a means of reminding the districts of why they must never attempt to rebel again.

"I don't know," she said finally. "Some of them look pretty tough. I don't know how long I'd last against that District 2 boy . . . What was his name again?"

Lukas shrugged. "I know what you mean. Still, perhaps he'll be dead before too long," he added with more optimism than he felt. Gaius was a Career, after all, and they always had an unfair advantage, having trained for the Games all their lives when the official rules stated that no tribute should be trained before they arrived in the Capitol. And, in all but one of the last ten Games, the final five had included at least one Career.

"I guess we'll just have to do our best, only . . ." Ruth sighed deeply, wishing there was some way out of the situation she had been forced into. But, in the nation of Panem, such wishes never came true.

"What's up?" Lukas moved closer to his district partner, but refrained from touching her even though he could see that she was troubled. He could not afford to get too attached to her, not when it was a stone cold certainty that one or both of them would be dead within a matter of weeks.

"I don't know if I'll be able to do it. Kill someone, I mean."

"Me neither, but we'll have to if we're to stand any chance in these Games." In theory, it was possible for a tribute to win without ever killing anyone; they just had to lie low and wait for their fellow tributes to wipe each other out. In practice, however, such tactics rarely worked, not least because the Gamemakers had ways of making sure that, if a tribute was not killed by a fellow tribute, he or she would die by some other means. Twenty-four entered the arena, but only one could leave alive. "But," Lukas added, "I'm going to try to kill only in self-defence. I don't want to lose sight of my principles just because I'm in the Hunger Games."

"Neither do I," said Ruth. But she couldn't help wondering how long they would be able to maintain their principles once they were in the arena. As soon as they stepped off their metal plates at the start of the Games, the tributes could do pretty much whatever they liked to each other; the line was drawn at cannibalism, but even that was not officially prohibited, merely discouraged. Other than that, however, there were no restrictions. She recalled the Games from two years earlier, in which the boy tribute from District 2 had raped three opponents (all male) before slitting their throats. It had come as a relief to everyone when the district partner of one of the boys he'd attacked decapitated him with an axe.

Fortunately, even in the Hunger Games, such occurrences were rare. So Ruth shook her head in an attempt to clear the memory from her mind and headed for her quarters, pausing to whisper: "Good night" to Lukas as she passed him.

* * *

Later, Ruth lay awake in bed, her mind running through the events of the day. Familiar faces flashed before her eyes - her parents, her sister and brother-in-law, her friends. It was still hard for her to believe that she might never see them again and she wondered how they were coping. Officially, the Hunger Games were supposed to be a time of celebration, but the only thing anyone in the districts celebrated at this time was the fact that their children were safe for another year. And, if someone's youngest child was eighteen years old and had escaped the reaping, there was a double celebration to mark the fact that the family would not have to face the annual fear and uncertainty again. At least until the first grandchild turned twelve . . .

Ruth thought of Demmie and Neil, Katie and Alf, the Green family. They would now be in their respective houses, the shutters closed, facing up to the prospect of losing their loved ones. And the same scenario would be repeated in each of the eleven other districts, though the parents of the tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4 might allow themselves a little cautious optimism. After all, the odds were that it would be one of their children who was on every television screen in Panem come victory night.

Trying not to think of the fact that she might, at most, only have a few more weeks to live, not to mention that she might soon be responsible for the death of at least one other human being, she turned over and allowed herself to fall asleep.

* * *

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!"

Ruth woke to the sound of Septima breezing into her quarters and drawing back the blinds on the window. She sat up in bed, wondering where she was and why a woman with mint green hair had just woken her up. Then, she remembered - her name had been called at the reaping yesterday, which meant she was on her way to the Capitol. She was a tribute in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games, one of twenty-four kids who would soon be fighting each other to the death. Slowly, she dragged herself out of bed.

"Hurry up and get dressed," Septima told her. "Breakfast's almost ready." And, with that, she left, tottering along on her high heels. Ruth sighed as she watched her go, wondering why women in the Capitol wanted to wear such ridiculous shoes. But, then again, they didn't need sensible shoes, not when their lives were one long round of fashion, bodily enhancements and various other things not essential to their survival. The districts supplied everything the Capitol needed: luxury items from District 1, weaponry from District 2, though their official industry was masonry . . . and so on.

Ruth peeled off the nightdress she had worn the previous night and took a shower. Then, once she had dried herself on the fluffy white towels which had been provided, she got dressed, putting on the dress she had worn yesterday; it was hardly worth putting on fresh clothes, not when she would soon be at the Remake Centre, being prepped for the opening ceremonies. They were not due to start until this evening, but the tributes had to be made to look presentable beforehand, which meant they had to be bathed and scrubbed, their eyebrows and fingernails evened out. And any excess body hair (which, for the female tributes, meant hair which grew on any parts of their bodies other than their heads) would have to be removed.

In the meantime, Ruth picked up the bracelet which Katie had given her and slipped it onto her wrist, before going to join the others for breakfast.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The train emerged from the long tunnel, giving Ruth and Lukas their first sight of the Capitol, the city from which Panem was ruled with an iron fist. This was where District 9's grain was sent, to be distributed among the other districts - in theory. In practice, everyone knew the Capitol always took the largest share of each district's main product. Not that anyone dared to complain, not after the failed rebellion which had resulted in the creation of the Hunger Games; the Capitol had all the power and they weren't shy about displaying it. Forcing twenty-four youngsters to fight to the death each year was only one of the ways in which Panem's rulers maintained their grip on the population.

Glancing out of the window, Ruth caught a glimpse of several gaudily dressed people standing on the platform, watching as the tribute train from District 9 pulled in. She felt physically sick. It wasn't just that some of them looked grotesque in her eyes, their bodies so altered that they barely looked human, but she knew how much they were looking forward to seeing her die. Even the ones who had children of their own would soon be watching as she and the other tributes fought to the death. She pulled away from the window and sat back down at the table, which was still laden with the remains of breakfast.

"Are you OK?" Lukas asked, as he drained the last dregs of the cup of coffee he had been drinking.

"I think they're sick!" Ruth burst out.

"Who are?"

"Those people out there." She gestured towards the window. "They're just waiting to watch us kill each other! It's . . ."

Luckily, the train came to a halt at that moment and the rest of Ruth's tirade remained unspoken as Septima herded the party from District 9 out onto the platform. But she could not stop thinking how unfair it was that she should be forced to kill other human beings because of something which had happened before her parents were born. However, there was nothing she could do; she was a tribute in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games and there could be no escape. Within a few minutes, she and Lukas would be at the Remake Centre, the first stop for tributes when they arrived in the Capitol.

* * *

Hours later, scrubbed, manicured and minus her body hair (fortunately, she had not had much to start with) Ruth stood in the bottom level of the Remake Centre, waiting for the opening ceremonies to start. All around her, stylists were putting the finishing touches to their tributes' costumes and loading them into horse-drawn chariots, in which the tributes would ride through the city before arriving at the president's mansion. From there, they would be taken to the Training Centre, where they would stay until the start of the Games.

Ruth had had mixing feelings about the tribute parade. She knew, from years of watching the Hunger Games on television, that she would be dressed up to represent her district's main industry, but she also knew there was no telling what, if anything, she would end up wearing. She remembered a year when the District 3 tributes had worn nothing but metallic body paint and foil wigs to illustrate their district's electronics industry. And, a year or two after that, the tributes from District 4 had worn very revealing bathing costumes made from a material which resembled the scales of a fish. Of course, since District 4 was one of the Career districts, its tributes were generally well-fed and therefore had the physique for skimpy outfits. But tributes from the poorer districts were another matter; dressing them in almost nothing only emphasised how underfed many of them were.

Luckily, no tributes were going to be paraded through the streets naked, or nearly naked, this year. The stylists had all come up with decent costumes, with the obvious exception of the ones responsible for District 12, who had dressed Kris and Lorna in the usual unflattering coal-miners' outfits. Ruth didn't know if the stylists for 12 lacked imagination or simply couldn't be bothered to make an effort, but the tribute parade costumes worn by kids from that district had rarely altered in more than forty years. But everyone else looked as though someone had actually taken time over their costumes; even the stylists for District 7, the lumber district, had foregone the usual tree costumes in favour of dressing Pine and Forrest in outfits made from a material which had been cleverly woven to give the impression of varnished wood.

Ruth herself was wearing a simple, unadorned dress in a pale gold colour, the same colour as a field of ripe wheat, which hung just above her ankles in graceful folds. Around her left wrist, she wore a corsage consisting of three ears of wheat attached to a length of ribbon. Lukas, standing beside her, wore a tunic made from the same material as Ruth's dress; it had been the idea of their stylists, Lucretia and Poppaea, that Lukas and Ruth's costumes should reflect the appearance of District 9's vast fields of grain as harvest time drew near. Even the Grecian-style sandals which both tributes wore were the colour of straw. And the theme also extended to the horses pulling the District 9 chariot: four beautiful palominos.

"And now for the finishing touch." Ruth's stylist, Lucretia, a young woman with spiky purple hair, produced a golden crown and placed it on Ruth's head. This crown had no jewels, but the front had been crafted to look like two stalks of wheat crossed over. Poppaea placed an identical crown on Lukas's head and the two stylists stepped back to admire their handiwork.

"You both look beautiful," said Lucretia.

"Simply marvellous," added Poppaea, clapping her hands with their long pink fingernails and giving herself and Lucretia a round of applause. Everything about Poppaea was pink - her hair, her fingernails, her clothes. She even wore pink contact lenses - even the Capitol's talent for cosmetic alteration did not yet extend to changing the colour of someone's eyes - to make her eyes match the colour scheme. Ruth just thought she looked freakish and was glad it was Lucretia who had been assigned to be her stylist.

* * *

With nothing else to do until the start of the parade, Ruth looked round at the other tributes. They were arranged in district order, with Jet and Xanadu of District 1 in the chariot nearest the doors. As always, the District 1 tributes looked positively regal - Xanadu in a brocade dress accented with a gold belt around her waist, Jet in satin breeches, a ruffled shirt, a waistcoat made from the same material as his partner's dress and shoes with gold buckles on his feet. Both tributes wore red velvet cloaks trimmed with ermine, with ornate gold crowns to complete the regal look.

The opening music began and the doors of the Remake Centre opened to reveal the streets of the Capitol lined with spectators. And, one by one, the chariots bearing the young tributes rolled out into the night, out to face the people who would shortly be betting on each tribute's chances of survival. First Xanadu and Jet, then Juno and Gaius, then Freda and Watt . . . Being from District 9, Ruth and Lukas would have to wait until near the end, with only three more chariots still to emerge. In the meantime, they stood in their chariot, two teenagers dressed in golden costumes to represent the cereal crops grown in the home district they might never see again.

The chariot from District 8, the textile district, rolled out, bearing Marc and Alice with it. They were wearing plain white trousers and undershirts, over which they wore ponchos which had been made by sewing different types of fabric together. This made the two tributes look as though they were wearing patchwork blankets; they were certainly the most colourful tributes in the parade. As Marc and Alice emerged into the streets, Ruth felt her heart pounding with excitement. This was it . . .

The moment the chariot bearing the District 9 tributes emerged from the Remake Centre and began steadily making its way down the street, Ruth found herself intoxicated by the sound of the cheering crowds. She gave no thought to the fact that the people who were cheering for her tonight could soon be watching her die, either as a result of one of the Gamemakers' traps or at the hands of her fellow tributes. The Hunger Games were something from another world - tonight, she was just a girl in a golden dress riding through the streets on a chariot. She smiled as she waved to the crowds, the throng of people all jostling to get a better look at this latest batch of tributes. And, though some were doubtless already betting on how long each tribute would last, or on which of them wouldn't even make it past the initial bloodbath, that was the furthest thing from Ruth's mind.

Presently, the chariots halted before the president's mansion and the tributes watched as President Snow, newly appointed ruler of Panem, emerged onto the balcony and gave the traditional welcoming speech. It was the exact same speech every year and it was consequently not surprising that most of the tributes found their attention wandering during it. Ruth found herself looking at a giant screen that was projecting the images those watching the parade on television were seeing. Right now, the camera was panning round each chariot in turn, giving viewers a close-up of the tributes in their costumes.

After a shot of Kris and Lorna, dressed in baggy black overalls and white miners' helmets, the camera switched back to President Snow. "And may the odds be ever in your favour," he said, finishing his speech with the words that everyone in Panem associated with the Hunger Games. The national anthem played and the chariots made one final circuit before delivering the tributes to the Training Centre, where they would stay until the Games began in a few days' time.

* * *

"Well, I think we've managed to secure you a few sponsors," Septima was saying. "Mind you, one of them did say he'd get back to me after he knew your training scores . . ."

Ruth and the others were in the dining room on the ninth floor of the Training Centre, discussing the events of the day over a meal of roast duck in orange sauce. While the two tributes were being prepped for the parade, Septima, Ethan and Thalia had not been idle, far from it. They would remain responsible for Ruth and Lukas until the Games began and one of their duties was to sign up sponsors. Sponsors could quite literally mean the difference between life and death in the arena, sending in gifts to aid the tributes they were backing. These gifts tended to be fairly basic items, but they cost far more than they did normally and they became more expensive the longer the Games went on.

Several young men and women in white tunics were acting as servers, but there was something about them that Ruth couldn't quite place. Something missing . . . As one of them leaned across to take her plate at the end of the course, she realised what it was; none of the servers had spoken a word all the time they had been standing there. Not even a simple: "Enjoy your meal."

"They're Avoxes," Ethan replied when she mentioned the servers' silence. "Criminals," he added in response to the blank look on Ruth's face. "They've had their tongues cut to keep them from speaking."

"But why? What did they do?" Ruth had never heard of such a punishment before. In District 9, criminals were dealt with in one of three ways: hanging, whipping or a session in the stocks. She could not begin to imagine what it must be like to have one's tongue mutilated and was tempted to ask the nearest Avox to open his mouth so she could see for herself. But she decided it might not be wise.

"I don't know." It was Thalia who spoke this time. "But it was probably some kind of political crime, not that you're likely to find out."

"Why not? They can still write, can't they? Even if they can't talk anymore . . ."

"That's true," said Ethan. "But they're not allowed to communicate with us, except in the line of duty. And we're not allowed to address them directly unless we're giving them an order. That's part of the punishment."

Ruth couldn't help feeling a pang of pity for the young men and women whose tongues had been cut, turning them into mute slaves. That was bad enough, but the fact that no-one could speak to them except to give an order added to the punishment. She had always imagined that the death penalty was the most severe punishment that could be inflicted, but this was even worse. And some of the Avoxes looked as though they were barely older than she was.

Lukas, sitting beside Ruth, decided it would be a good idea to change the subject. "So what's the schedule for tomorrow?" he asked Ethan.

* * *

After the meal, the party went into another room to watch the televised recap of the tribute parade. They watched as the chariots emerged from the Remake Centre one by one, commenting on the costumes worn by the tributes. Xanadu and Jet, looking magnificent in their royal-themed outfits; Juno and Gaius, dressed in white armour to depict statues of Roman soldiers, any exposed areas of skin painted to complete the effect; Freda and Watt, whose metallic blue shirts and trousers, decorated with geometric patterns to suggest circuit boards, were topped off with glowing headdresses; Marina, wearing a flowing aquamarine dress to represent the sea, while Shaun, wearing an iridescent body suit complete with fins, portrayed a fish . . .

Jennie and Vance appeared in close-fitting black outfits with yellow lightning bolts on the chests and matching headdresses, representing electricity; District 5's main industry was power. Next came Sarah and Max from District 6, the transport district, who wore scaled down versions of the uniforms worn by chauffeurs in the Capitol; they were followed by Pine and Forrest in their "wooden" outfits, then Alice and Marc in their patchwork ponchos, then . . .

"That's us!" Ruth cried, as she saw herself and Lukas emerge from the Remake Centre dressed in their golden, wheat-themed costumes. A stark contrast to the opulance of the District 1 tributes, the District 9 tributes were the very model of understated elegance; their costumes needed no flashy accessories. Lucretia and Poppaea had achieved their objective of capturing the appearance of a field of wheat, ripe and ready to be harvested, perfectly.

Behind Ruth and Lukas came Bessie and Todd, depicting the livestock industry of District 10. Bessie wore a cowgirl's outfit complete with hat, while Todd wore a brown body suit and horned headdress to depict a bull. Till and Harvey's stylists had chosen to reflect District 11's agricultural industry by dressing their tributes in brown tunics to represent soil, hanging garlands of leaves round their necks and topping it all off with hats decorated with assorted vegetables. Last of all came Lorna and Kris of District 12, their miners' outfits looking even worse on screen than they had in real life.

"Typical 12," muttered Septima. "Never make an effort. Still, I doubt either of them will survive the bloodbath anyway."

Ruth was tempted to point out that it wasn't Kris and Lorna's fault they came from the poorest district in Panem. And she particularly disliked Septima's implication that it was a waste of time making District 12 tributes look good, because they almost always got killed early on. But she decided it would be safer to avoid saying anything.

* * *

When the recap was over, Lukas and Ruth were told to go to bed, Septima reminding them that training would begin at 10 AM sharp the next morning. As they made their way to their rooms, Lukas turned to his partner and asked her the question he had been longing to ask all evening. "Ruth, I've been thinking we should . . . you know . . ."

"Are you coming on to me?" Ruth demanded. "Because, if you are, this is neither the time nor the place. We're tributes, Lukas - in a few weeks, at least one of us will be dead."

"No, that's not what I meant." Lukas blushed slightly as he realised Ruth had misunderstood him. "I was talking about us being allies, when we get to the arena. It'll be a lot safer than trying to go it alone - you know how the Careers always band together and hunt down the weaker players."

That was perfectly true; Ruth had seen it happen in previous Hunger Games. The tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4 formed a pack and spent the first few days of the Games picking off their opponents. In fact, that was what had happened to Blossom; the Careers had cornered her and attacked her with clubs, before fleeing and leaving her for dead. Lukas was right - tributes with allies were less vulnerable than those without. "OK," Ruth said. "We'll be allies."

But, as they shook hands on the deal, a few unanswerable questions occurred to her. Would both of them survive the bloodbath? If one of them died, how long would the other be able to survive alone? And what if, at the end of the Games, she and Lukas were the last tributes left standing?


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

"Right, listen up because this is very important."

Twenty-four pairs of eyes were focused on Hippolyta, the powerfully built woman who was in charge of training the tributes in preparation for the Games. Over the next few days, they would be taught a variety of skills which, while they could not guarantee a tribute's survival, would give each of the assembled youngsters at least a slight chance once they got to the arena. Of course, for tributes like Kris and Lorna who were unlucky enough to be born in District 12, that chance was very slight indeed.

"Some of you . . ." Here, Hippolyta looked meaningfully at the six Careers, who were already eyeing the weapons that had been provided for training purposes. " . . . may think you've been trained enough already." It was no secret in the Capitol that tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4 were often trained in the use of weapons before they arrived at the Training Centre; in fact, this particular piece of rule-breaking was actively encouraged, though not for the other nine districts. "However, there are other skills which will also help you survive in the arena and these should not be neglected. Remember, even the most skilled fighters can die of starvation if they do not know how to find food."

"Throughout this gym, there are experts in various skills you will find useful during the Games. Some will teach you how to handle weapons, others how to trap game, light a fire, recognise which plants and fungi are safe to eat . . . and so on. You are free to visit the stations in any order you wish, but I recommend that you follow the advice of your mentors in deciding which stations to visit. And let me make one thing absolutely clear - any fighting between tributes must be saved for the arena. If you wish to practise with a partner, you should ask one of the assistants."

Hippolyta reeled off a list of all the training stations and the skills which could be learned there, then dismissed the tributes. Within minutes, the Careers were at the various weapons-training stations and Gaius was thrusting a sword into the belly of one of the dummies which had been set up for target practice less than five minutes after that.

* * *

"So, where shall we start?" asked Lukas.

Ruth looked round at the other tributes, now dispersed among the various stations. Jet and Gaius, the male tributes from Districts 1 and 2, were at the station where tributes were taught how to handle a sword; their female counterparts, Xanadu and Juno, were doing a spot of target practice over at the archery station. And Marina and Shaun of District 4 were showing off their spear-handling skills. However, the only other tributes who had even gone near any weapons were Pine and Forrest, who were at the axe-throwing station; as Ruth watched, Pine hefted an axe above her head and hurled it at a nearby target, hitting it dead centre. No doubt, coming from District 7, she and Forrest had been taught how to handle axes from an early age. Everyone else, however, either hung back uncertainly or had gravitated towards the survival skills stations.

"Which is the nearest station?" she asked in reply to Lukas's question. Ethan and Thalia had give them no specific instructions about training, but she thought that, since she and Lukas were going to be allies in the arena, they might as well start by both visiting the same station.

The nearest station turned out to be the fire-making station. The instructor, a young woman named Julia, had set up several small campfires for practice purposes and was already instructing Till, the girl tribute from District 11, when Lukas and Ruth approached the station. "Knowing how to light a fire can mean the difference between life and death in the arena," Julia was saying. "Fire can provide warmth and may be used to cook any game you may have caught. However, its benefits must be weighed against the risk of attracting attention from other tributes. So, if you light a fire while in the arena, make sure the smoke cannot be seen."

Julia then ran through the various methods which could be used to start a fire. Matches were available at the Cornucopia, the giant golden horn which was piled with weapons and supplies at the start of the Games, but it was useful to know other fire-lighting methods in case you either didn't manage to obtain a supply of matches or your matches ran out. Next, she had the three tributes practise lighting a fire using tinder and flint, which involved one of them holding a piece of flint and a piece of steel against some dried tinder and striking them together to produce a spark. The trick was getting the spark to land on the tinder; if you succeeded, the others had to blow on it to get the fire going. Ruth soon found that this was not as easy as it looked, but she persevered, knowing that it would be vital to know this stuff once she was in the arena. Of course, there were no guarantees that she would even survive the bloodbath.

Once Ruth, Lukas and Till had practised starting fires as a team, Julia had each of them practise on their own. Tributes had to learn to be completely self-sufficient in the arena, since the very nature of the Hunger Games meant they could never entirely rely on anyone except themselves. While alliances were common at the beginning of the Games, they were invariably short-lived and often ended with the deaths of one or more of the tributes involved. Alternatively, former allies might elect to go their separate ways, rather than risk finding themselves in the impossible position of deciding which of them should be the last tribute to die and which of them should claim victory.

* * *

When they had had enough of making fires, Lukas and Ruth headed for the edible plants station, while Till went to practise tying knots, along with Marc of District 8 and her own district partner, Harvey. They would save their first visit to a weapons-training station for the afternoon session.

A little before one o'clock, the tributes were allowed to break for lunch and filed into the communal dining room. It was, Ruth noted, similar to the cafeteria at her school, but with one startling difference; almost everyone was sitting on their own. Even those who were sharing a table tended to sit as far apart as possible and acted as though the other person did not exist. The only exceptions to this rule were the Careers, who had commandeered one of the tables - Gaius, taking advantage of the fact that no adults were looking, had unceremoniously turfed twelve-year-old Max out of his seat - and were gathered noisily around it. As Ruth walked past, she heard a little of the Careers' conversation.

"Of course, I had to volunteer when that kid got reaped," Xanadu was saying. "But I didn't do it for her - I did it for the Keller family name. After all, my father . . ." She broke off as she noticed Ruth standing nearby. "What are you looking at?"

As one, the Careers turned to look at Ruth, who found herself staring into the faces of the six toughest tributes in the Training Centre. Already, she sensed, they were looking forward to cornering her in the arena, just as their counterparts from twenty-one years ago had cornered Blossom. Career tributes, Ruth knew from years of watching the Hunger Games, tended to be arrogant bullies, especially the ones from District 2. They thought they were somehow better than the other tributes because their districts enjoyed certain privileges the other districts did not. Such as the head start their kids received when it came to training for the Games . . .

The tableau held for several seconds before Juno, a dark-haired eighteen-year-old who also happened to be the oldest of this year's tributes, broke the silence. "Don't they teach you manners where you come from?"

"Obviously not," said Jet, before Ruth could speak. He had the blond hair and green eyes typical of District 1 and might have been considered handsome had he not worn a constant arrogant sneer. "You know," he added, addressing his fellow Careers, "I don't think they should let trash like those two from 12 into these Games." He gestured contemptuously at a nearby table, where Kris sat struggling with his cutlery. "Look at him! Doesn't even know how to use a knife and fork!"

Of course, Jet had no more say in who was and who wasn't entered in the reaping than the rest of the tributes. Everyone in the districts who was between the ages of twelve and eighteen was entered, excluding those who had been victors in previous Hunger Games. That was how it had been for the past forty-four years.

* * *

Ruth joined Lukas at a table which was as far from the Careers' table as possible and sat down opposite him. They began eating in silence, not knowing what to talk about. Their families? Home? No, that would only remind them of the things they had been forced to leave behind. And, with their immediate future consisting of a fight to the death against more than twenty other youngsters, they couldn't discuss any long term plans either. Finally, more as an excuse to give herself something to say than anything else, Ruth mentioned what Xanadu had said about her father.

"What did she mean by that?" she asked. "And another thing - I'm sure I've heard the name Keller somewhere before. And I'm sure it had some connection to the Games. But what?"

Lukas shrugged. "I don't know," he said through a mouthful of sweetcorn. "Maybe you could ask Ethan. He's been involved with the Games almost since they started - perhaps he knows something."

"Perhaps," agreed Ruth. She thought back to when she and Lukas had watched the recap of the reapings, recalling how Xanadu had practically run forward to volunteer. And, it seemed, she had not done so out of concern for Sequin, the twelve-year-old whose name had originally been drawn, but for the sake of her family's name. Just who were the Kellers and what did they have to do with the Hunger Games? She could not recall any tributes with that surname appearing in previous Games, but maybe before she was born . . .

Ruth tried to put thoughts of Xanadu's family out of her mind as the tributes trooped back to the gym for the afternoon session. This time, she and Lukas agreed, they would focus on weapons training and, with that in mind, they headed for the sword-fighting station. As with their fire-making lesson this morning, they found themselves sharing the session with Till, a dark-skinned girl of medium height who wore her black hair in multiple braids and had a very open and friendly nature. Despite herself, despite knowing that there was a strong possibility that one of them might soon have to kill the other, Ruth found herself drawn to Till and, by the end of their first sword-fighting lesson, she and Lukas had picked up another ally.

* * *

Over the next couple of days, Till regularly joined Lukas and Ruth at various stations. Like Ruth, she was fifteen years old and had an older sister, whose name was Arabelle, back home. "I did have a brother," she explained while she and Ruth were practising spear-throwing on the third day. "Ferdy. But he disturbed a tracker jacker nest . . ."

She did not need to elaborate. Everyone in Panem knew what tracker jackers were - muttations, genetically engineered wasps with stings that were so toxic that being stung by more than a handful of the insects was almost invariably fatal; some victims were killed instantly. And the toxin also contained a powerful hallucinogen which had been known to drive those who managed to survive being stung mad. The Capitol had bred them during the rebellion to use as a weapon against the districts; afterwards, several nests had been left in various locations, including the orchards of District 11. Those working in the orchards carried herbs which could be used to heal anyone who got stung, but there was nothing anyone could do for someone who was set upon by a whole swarm of tracker jackers. And that was what had happened to Ferdy.

"I'm sorry," Ruth told Till. But some of her sorrow was directed at Till's parents, even though she had never met them. They had already lost their only son and now it looked as though they might lose one of their daughters as well, both to things created by the Capitol. "Have you decided what you're going to do for your private session?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

"Yes," replied Till. She did not say anything else, not that Ruth had expected her to. On the afternoon of the third training day, each tribute was given fifteen minutes alone with the Gamemakers to show off their skills. The Gamemakers would then award a mark out of twelve which could be used to give those betting on the Games an idea of a tribute's potential, though tributes who scored highly did not always go on to win. Thalia, for example, had only scored a four, whereas the boy who had been District 9's male tribute at her Games had fallen in the bloodbath, even though he had received a ten. But, regardless of a tribute's score, what they did to earn it was strictly confidential, known only to the Gamemakers and the tribute and his or her entourage.

* * *

The private sessions were the only occasion in the Games where the male tribute from each district preceded the female. Therefore, it was Jet (and not Xanadu) who was the first to be called out of lunch and told to report to the gym. After a quarter of an hour had passed, Xanadu was summoned for her session, followed by Gaius, then Juno, then Watt . . . Gradually, the dining room began to empty until only eight tributes remained, including Lukas and Ruth.

Ruth looked round at the remaining tributes, trying to gauge how they were feeling. Bessie and Todd were debating whether they should try for a high score and risk being seen as competition or aim lower in the hope that their scores would be so mediocre they wouldn't attract as much attention. Till looked quietly confident, while Harvey, a rather quiet boy with the same dark skin as his partner, sat looking down at his hands. Finally, Lorna was biting her nails and Kris was pacing the floor, the anxiety for both District 12 tributes made worse by the fact that they would have to wait until all the other tributes had been seen.

Lukas's name was called and, as he got up to leave, Ruth took hold of his hand. "Good luck," she whispered.

"You too." And, with that, Lukas headed for his private session, leaving Ruth to wait until her name was called. The next fifteen minutes felt like the longest of Ruth's life; it was as though the Capitol had done something to slow time down, make each second drag on longer than usual. But she reminded herself that even President Snow could not control time. He might have absolute power over every man, woman and child in Panem, but no-one had the ability to make time go faster or slower. No, time only appeared to be dragging because she had nothing to do except think about what lay ahead. She would have attempted to talk to Till, but she was forbidden to speak to a tribute from another district immediately before her private session.

Presently, however, she heard the words she had been waiting for:

"Ruth Waterhouse, report to the gym."

* * *

Ruth stepped through the doors of the gym to find the Gamemakers assembled there. Dressed in distinctive purple robes, they had been observing the training sessions from the beginning and it was these men and women she must try to impress. She had spent the last three days thinking about what she was going to do for her private session, which skill she was going to demonstrate. In the end, she had decided on sword-fighting, recalling how the instructor had told her she showed an aptitude for it. All right, maybe she wasn't quite in the same league as Jet or Gaius, but she had learned enough to be able to wield a sword in combat.

She moved towards the sword-fighting station and studied the rack which contained swords of every description. She immediately dismissed the huge, impressive greatswords which required two hands to wield, knowing she did not have the strength to lift them, never mind fight with them. Instead, she selected a smaller blade, one which could be wielded with one hand, and walked back to where the Gamemakers were assembled.

"Please show us what you can do," said the Head Gamemaker, a woman named Marcia Hunt, settling back to watch the demonstration. Just as she had done on seventeen previous occasions today . . .

Ruth started by demonstrating a few basic movements, ones she had learned in her first sword-fighting lesson. Standing with her feet apart, she raised the sword above her head, then swept it downwards in an arc, before pretending to stab an imaginary opponent. Next, she went to the edible plants station and fetched a large root, placing it on a nearby vaulting horse and sweeping her blade down to slice the root cleanly in two. Several Gamemakers nodded approval; no doubt a Career could do much better, but Ruth was doing well for someone who had only recently learned how to handle a sword. After that, Ruth turned her attention to the dummies, decapitating one and thrusting the point of her sword into the belly of another, just as she had seen Gaius do on the first day of training.

Ruth's mind was entirely focused on the demonstration; she gave no thought to the other twenty-three tributes in the Training Centre. Had she done so, she might have had a few qualms about the fact that the next time she did this might be for real, that she might soon be killing another human being. But the only thing on her mind right now was giving a good account of herself to the Gamemakers.

Presently, Marcia told her she could go and she returned the sword to the rack, before walking out of the gym without looking back.

* * *

The training scores were announced on television that evening in a programme which, along with everything else to do with the current year's Hunger Games, was mandatory viewing for the whole of Panem. This meant that every single television set in the country was turned on, even in District 12, where the electricity supply was notoriously unreliable, though not during mandatory broadcasts. In fact, the only time most people watched television was when a mandatory programme was being shown, which was not limited to the Hunger Games; important government announcements also fell into this category, as did major events, such as the funeral (at the end of the previous year) of Snow's predecessor, President Kemp. Mostly, however, Panem's single, Capitol-backed television station broadcast a constant stream of propaganda, including footage showing the ruins of District 13, and repeat showings of previous Hunger Games.

Ruth, Lukas and their entourage, including Lucretia and Poppaea, who had (along with the other stylists) arrived at the Training Centre that afternoon, were assembled in front of the screen. The anthem played and the Capitol seal appeared as the broadcast began. As no cameras were allowed inside the Training Centre while training was taking place, the photographs of the tributes which had been taken before they left their home districts were flashed up onscreen, along with a number to indicate each tribute's score.

As usual, the Careers all scored highly; Jet received a ten, while Xanadu, Gaius, Juno and Marina each scored a nine and Shaun achieved an eight. In theory, a tribute could get up to twelve points, but, in more than forty years, no-one had ever achieved a score higher than ten. Most of the others scored somewhere in the region of four to six points, though Freda of District 3 and Pine of District 7 each managed an eight. Then came the scores for District 9. Ruth watched as Lukas's picture was flashed up, along with a score of seven, followed moments later by her own picture and an eight.

"Well done," Ethan said gruffly. "Seven and eight - that's pretty good." Not that the training scores guaranteed the outcome of the Games; he remembered the four Thalia had received, the second lowest score that year, and how she had gone on to win, albeit at the cost of her left eye. Ever since then, she had worn a patch over the empty socket, having rejected an offer by a Capitol surgeon to construct an artificial replacement for her missing eye.

Ruth paid no attention to the remaining six scores, except to note that Till had received a nine, the only non-Career to score more than eight points. Finally, with Lorna's score of five, the broadcast ended and Septima, who was nearest the television, reached out to switch the set off. "And don't forget," she said, as Ruth and Lukas headed off to bed. "You'll be practising for your interviews all day tomorrow."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

With training over, the next day was given over to preparing the tributes for their pre-Games interviews, which would take place the following evening. It would, Ruth knew, be her last chance to win over any sponsors, though she had mixed feelings about the whole affair. She understood that it was important to make herself seem likeable - Ethan and Thalia had both agreed that she would never be able to pull off a "tough" act - but she wished it didn't have to be to people who would soon be baying for her blood.

Septima had her practise walking in high heels, though fortunately not in a pair with heels so ridiculously high that the wearer was practically forced onto tiptoe. However, the shoes she did use for interview rehearsals still had higher heels than most girls in the districts were used to and Ruth found herself struggling to keep her balance. "How can you walk properly in these things?!" she demanded, kicking off her shoes and flopping down on the couch. At least, she thought bitterly, Lukas wouldn't have to wear shoes which forced his feet into unnatural positions.

"Simple," Septima replied airily. "I've had lots of practice. But you've only got until tomorrow night to get this right, so put your shoes back on and come on." Of course, female tributes did not always have to wear high heels with their interview outfits, but they usually did and Septima felt it was important that Ruth be prepared for this.

Somehow, Ruth managed to get the hang of walking in heels without wobbling all the time. But they were just the start. The rest of the session was given over to body language, to teaching Ruth to sit and move in a way which would make her appealing to potential sponsors. And then there was the session with Thalia, which went over the content of Ruth's interview and how she should present herself. Pretending to be Caesar, Thalia had Ruth answer some of the questions that were commonly asked at tribute interviews. How do you feel about the Capitol? What will be your strategy in the arena? What is your impression of the other tributes?

Ruth replied that she had decided to form an alliance with Lukas and Till, if they all survived the bloodbath. But, beyond that, she didn't really have a strategy other than trying to stay alive as long as possible. Having had as little as possible to do with the tributes who weren't part of her alliance, she could only make general comments about them based on what she had observed during training. As for the Capitol, there were a few things she would like to say, but none of them would be acceptable in a televised interview and some might even cause the Capitol to make an example of her, so she simply waxed lyrical about how different it was from District 9.

* * *

The next morning, Ruth was woken by her prep team, the people who had scrubbed, manicured and dehaired her before the tribute parade. Though the interviews would not take place until this evening, she would still need to be prepared, a process which would take several hours even without the need to get rid of unsightly body hair. Like that of all the girls, Ruth's skin had been treated with a substance which would keep hair from growing back for several weeks, not that it would matter for most of them. The same substance had been used on the boys' faces to make sure they stayed clean-shaven for the duration of the Games; this included Max who, though he had not yet started to grow facial hair, was at an age where it could begin to happen at any time.

Hours later, her skin glowing, her face made up and her hair styled into loose ringlets which tumbled around her shoulders, Ruth stood in her bathrobe as Lucretia entered, carrying a large garment bag. She hung the bag on a coat hook, then told Ruth to close her eyes. This Ruth did, finding herself excited in spite of everything to see the dress which Lucretia had designed for her, the dress which all of Panem would shortly see her wearing. She heard the swish of a zip being unfastened . . .

"All right, you can open your eyes now," said Lucretia.

Ruth did so - and found herself looking at the prettiest dress she had ever seen. It was lilac satin, with simple cap sleeves that just barely covered her shoulders and a full skirt which fell just below Ruth's knees when she put it on. The matching open-toed shoes had heels, but did not force the wearer to balance precariously. Add to that the satin roses in the same shade of light purple which Lucretia fastened in Ruth's hair and the overall impression was of a girl, young and innocent, but just beginning to show a hint of the woman she might one day become.

Ruth could hardly believe the girl in the full-length mirror was her. It was as though a magical creature had descended to Earth and taken her place, a creature from a world where there were no Hunger Games, no Capitol using youngsters as pawns in their oppression of the population. But the reality was that she did live in a world where twenty-three kids died each year in a demonstration of the Capitol's power over the people, twenty-three kids denied the chance to grow up. In that moment, she wanted more than anything to escape, to flee from this place of decadent luxury, this place where forcing youngsters to kill each other was considered an acceptable form of entertainment. But she knew there was no escaping from here; security around the Training Centre was extremely tight and, even if she could somehow bypass it, it was unlikely she would get very far. In any case, she had no time to think about it before Lucretia told her it was time to go.

Ruth smoothed out her skirt and, holding herself as Septima had taught her, followed Lucretia out of her room to meet Lukas and Poppaea. Lukas, Ruth noted when she saw him, was wearing a pale grey suit with a white shirt, which complemented her lilac dress perfectly. Something which couldn't be said about Poppaea's outfit; as usual, the woman was dressed from head to toe in pink, including an outlandish feather headdress. And, to make matters worse, she was wearing her freakish contact lenses again. Ruth didn't mind pink - after all, the dress she had worn to the reaping had had a pattern of pink flowers - but Poppaea went completely over the top when it came to her favourite colour.

"Well, shall we go down?" Lucretia said, once the two tributes had had time to take in each other's interview outfits.

* * *

A crowd was assembled before the stage which had been set up in front of the Training Centre, watching as the tributes filed onto the stage. Xanadu, dressed in a silver gown which sparkled whenever the light caught it, led the way as the twenty-four of them made their way to where they would sit in a semi-circle, waiting until it was their turn to be interviewed. As the girl tribute from District 1, she was scheduled to go first, followed by each tribute in turn until they got to Kris of District 12.

Further back in the line, Ruth could feel her heart hammering as it had done on the day she was reaped and thrust into this contest where there could be only one winner. Had Septima, Thalia and Lucretia done enough? Would she make a good impression? Would she still be alive this time tomorrow? Those questions and more circulated through her mind as she took her seat between Marc and Lukas and waited for Caesar Flickerman, the man who had hosted the tribute interviews since the Thirty-second Games, to make his entrance. Glancing down the line, she caught the eye of Till, wearing a strapless ivory dress with a short skirt, and thought about giving her a quick wave. But, at that moment, the master of ceremonies came bounding onto the stage.

Every year for as long as she could remember, Ruth had watched Caesar host the tribute interviews. And, every year for as long as she could remember, his hair had been dyed a different colour, though its style remained the same, as did his suit, which was midnight blue and studded with tiny electric light bulbs. This year, his chosen hair colour was a vivid shade of fuchsia pink, one which Poppaea was bound to try and copy, and his lips and eyelids had, as usual, been painted to match. People of both sexes wore make-up in the Capitol and thought nothing of it.

Caesar warmed up the crowd with a funny anecdote about a man whose wife was so fond of dogs that she had herself surgically altered to look like one. "I suppose you could say he was married to a right bitch!" he quipped, pausing as the audience laughed at the joke. Only the tributes did not laugh; for them, this could potentially be the last night of their lives, hardly a time to be laughing at jokes. Although, Ruth thought to herself, there was probably some truth to this story, since it was not unheard of for people in the Capitol to take surgical "enhancement" as far as having various animal accoutrements fitted. For example, there was a stylist for one of the other districts who had a squirrel's tail sticking out of a slit in his trousers.

Once he had concluded his story about the dog-woman, Caesar called Xanadu forward for her interview.

* * *

Xanadu got up from her seat and shimmered and sparkled her way towards Caesar. Smiling, he took her hand and led her towards the seat on which the tributes sat for their pre-Games interviews. "So, Xanadu," he began, turning to face her, "how are you enjoying your time in the Capitol?"

"Oh, everyone's been most kind," Xanadu replied, smiling as she noticed the cameras trained on her. "And my stylist is an absolute genius. Did you see my tribute parade costume?" she asked. Rather unnecessarily, Ruth thought, since the whole of Panem had been obliged to watch, but Caesar didn't seem to notice.

"You mean that brocade number with the velvet and ermine cloak? Absolutely stunning! But, then again, we expect only the best from District 1; after all, you do make all the luxury goods we enjoy here in the Capitol. But enough about your costume! Tell me about yourself. You volunteered for the Games, didn't you? Could you please tell our audience what you were thinking at that moment?"

Xanadu paused, then cast a quick glance at the audience before replying. "Well, Sequin - that's the girl whose name was originally drawn - is only twelve. I knew she wouldn't have a chance in the arena, but that's not the only reason I volunteered. I did it to honour my family's name." At this, Ruth found herself listening closely, remembering when Xanadu had said something very similar to her fellow Careers.

"Your family's name?" Caesar echoed in reply. "Would you be related to the great Brilliant Keller?" he added, refering to the handsome youth from District 1 who had won the Fourteenth Hunger Games.

"Yes, I'm his daughter," was the reply. And, over in the tributes' waiting area, Ruth had to suppress a gasp of realisation. So that was why the name Keller sounded so familiar; her suspicions that there had been a previous tribute with that name had been correct. Brilliant Keller - Ruth recalled a long ago memory of seeing a mentor by that name interviewed during a previous Games. And, in the same moment, she recalled other occasions on which Brilliant had appeared on television, though the last had been several years ago. She could not remember how many years, but, since she only had vague recollections of Brilliant, it must have been when she was very young.

"But he started getting sick about eight years ago," Xanadu was saying. "He had the best doctors in District 1, but he just got worse. Eventually, he could no longer make the trip to the Capitol and had to give up mentoring."

"That must have been a difficult decision."

"It was," Xanadu replied, recalling the day her father had decided he could no longer play an active role in training District 1's tributes. As District 1 was a Career district, being a victor and, therefore, being eligible to mentor tributes was seen as a great honour. But Brilliant knew his health was failing; his illness had reached a stage where even the Capitol's best cosmetic surgeons would be hard pressed to conceal it. That year, he had attended the District 1 reaping as required by law, but that had been the last time he was seen in public. "He passed away soon after," Xanadu went on, pausing to look at the audience.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Caesar. "Brilliant Keller was before my time, of course, but he certainly lived up to his name. Do you know what was wrong with him?"

"I don't remember much - I was only nine when he died. I think it had something to do with a poison he was exposed to in the arena, something which stayed in his body for years, until . . . Anyway, I knew he'd always wanted to see me in the Games, so I decided I was going to volunteer one day - when I was old enough, of course." This was another example of how the mindset of people in the Career districts differed from the rest of Panem; while parents in most districts dreaded having their children's names read out at a reaping, those in Districts 1, 2 and 4 were often keen to see their children in the arena. Of course, this didn't mean it was any easier on the parents when the youngsters concerned died.

"And so you did," said Caesar. He looked as though he was about to ask another question, but, at that moment, a buzzer sounded. "Well, looks like our time's up. Best of luck."

And, with that, Xanadu returned to her seat and Jet, wearing a white suit which shimmered almost as much as his partner's dress, stepped forward.

* * *

Ruth paid little attention to the next few interviews, though she did get an overall sense of the angles some of the tributes were adopting. Juno, wearing a copper-coloured dress with a long slit up the side of the skirt, presented herself as a tough young warrior maiden, though this was hardly the most original angle for District 2 females. Watt, looking handsome in a cobalt blue suit, appeared to be something of a computer genius. Marina, who wore a coral pink dress with a fishtail skirt, likened herself to the ocean - calm and peaceful one moment, raging and violent the next. Vance, dressed in a black shirt and trousers with a red tie, attempted to flirt with the women in the audience, doubtless hoping they would be won over by his charms and decide to sponsor him. But Ruth absorbed very little when it came to the content of the interviews, until District 6's turn came.

Sarah, the youngest female tribute in this year's Games, stepped forward, dressed in a pale blue dress, her fair hair woven into pigtails with matching ribbons. Ruth watched as she walked up to Caesar, unable to think of anything other than that Sarah was the same age, give or take a few months, that Blossom had been at her pre-Games interview twenty-one years ago tonight. Back in District 9, Demmie must surely have found some excuse to slip out of the room; she always did when a twelve- or thirteen-year-old tribute was about to be interviewed.

Sarah took her seat opposite Caesar and the interview began. As before, Ruth did not pay much attention to what was being said, at least not until Caesar asked Sarah to tell him about her family. "Well, there's my parents, my brother and sister, then me," Sarah replied. "Carrie - that's my sister - got married last month. And Hugo, my brother, was at the reaping with me. He's sixteen and he's always trying to annoy me," she added with a touch of feigned bitterness which made it clear that she and Hugo liked each other really. "And my mother's going to have another baby soon."

"And are you looking forward to having a little brother or sister?"

Sarah looked down at her hands. "I was, but that was before they called my name at the reaping. Now I don't know if I'll . . ." Her voice began to waver and, sitting with the other tributes, Ruth had to fight the urge to go and comfort her. The tributes were not allowed to leave the waiting area until they were called, but, even if she could have gone up to Sarah, there would have been little she could do except offer consolation. Sarah was unlikely to make it to the end; her best hope was that, by telling Panem about her unborn sibling, she would move people to sponsor her so that she had at least a faint chance of getting home and seeing the new baby. It was, Ruth thought, uncomfortably close to what had happened to Blossom, who never got to see her nieces.

"Tell you what," said Caesar, moving across to Sarah and giving her a hug. "You do your best in the arena and that child can grow up proud of their big sister." He went back to his own seat and added: "And, speaking of the arena, what's your strategy going to be?"

"To keep out of everyone's way." Sarah had regained her composure and answered without hesitation. "The other tributes - they're all bigger than me. Except Max and I don't want to kill him. But maybe I can hide and wait until everyone else kills each other. If I'm the last tribute left, they'll have to give me the crown, won't they?"

Before Caesar could say anything in reply, the buzzer sounded and Sarah returned to her seat. To Ruth, the next few interviews seemed to go by unusually quickly, barely giving her time to register what the tributes were wearing or what angle they were adopting. Max, Pine, Forrest, Alice, Marc - and then . . .

"Ruth Waterhouse, District 9!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

"Ruth, welcome."

"Thank you," Ruth said, smiling as Septima had instructed her, even though she longed to be anywhere but here, being interviewed on live television when she could have less than twenty-four hours to live. Somehow, as often happens when you are dreading something, the last few days had flown by and she was now sitting opposite Caesar, preparing to answer questions in an interview which the whole of Panem would see. And, first thing tomorrow, she would be woken and transported to this year's arena, a place she might never leave alive. But she tried to avoid thinking about that and concentrated on answering the questions Caesar put to her.

"Now, Ruth, what was your first impression of the Capitol?" was Caesar's first question.

In Ruth's case, the truthful answer would have been that she thought it was tacky and garish, that she would much rather be back in District 9 than sitting here trying to impress people who were eager to watch her die. But she couldn't say all this without bringing trouble on herself and her family, so she simply said: "I thought it was very colourful, more colourful than District 9."

"Ah, yes - District 9," said Caesar. "I imagine you're used to seeing everything in shades of yellow, seeing as you produce so much of our nation's grain." Cereal crops were grown in Districts 9 and 11, though the latter did so on a much smaller scale and instead focused mainly on fruit and vegetables.

"Not really," Ruth replied. "We do have other colours. It's just that I'd only seen such bright shades on television until I came here. Well, except on our district escort," she added, recalling Septima's mint green hair and brightly coloured outfits. "But, yes, when it's nearly time for harvest, everything is yellow as far as the eye can see." For a moment, she was tempted to give a description of what went on in District 9 at harvest time, of how everyone worked day and night to gather the crops in. Her father's granary was always busy at that time of year, as grain was brought in to be stored before being transported to the Capitol; like all the other districts, the people of District 9 received little direct benefit from their own industry, which was why youngsters like Lukas and his sister, Letty, still had to take tesserae.

But she decided it would be safer not to, since the Capitol did not like people to know too much about what went on in other districts, even if the information itself seemed perfectly innocent. She recalled a boy tribute from District 4 who, at his pre-Games interview, had started talking at length about his father's fishing fleet, only for Caesar to cut him off before he could "give away all his district's secrets". Instead, she concentrated on answering the questions that Caesar put to her.

"How did you feel when your name was called at the reaping?" he asked next, smiling at her encouragingly.

Ruth thought back to the day Septima had drawn her name out of the reaping ball, the day she had said goodbye to her family for what could very well be the last time. "I was . . . I remember my heart was pounding, but I didn't want to show any fear. I knew that would only get me marked out as vulnerable, an easy target. And I didn't want people to think I was a coward." She recalled how she had promised Demmie that she would try to give a good account of herself, even though the odds of her actually winning were slim. Though not as slim as Kris or Lorna, both of whom would almost certainly be among the first fatalities when the Games began.

Somehow, Ruth managed to get through the rest of the interview, during which she talked at length about her friends and family back in District 9, though she avoided any mention of Blossom. That subject, she knew, was painful to Demmie and always would be. Even so, talking about those she might never see again was difficult, though she tried to hide her homesickness behind a carefree mask as Thalia had instructed her, knowing this was more likely to win her sponsors. Finally, to her relief, the buzzer sounded to indicate that her time was up and she got up to make way for Lukas.

* * *

Lukas took his seat opposite Caesar and the eighteenth interview of the evening began, with only six more to go after this. Watching along with the other tributes, Ruth couldn't help marvelling at the way Caesar was able to hold an audience's interest for nearly an hour-and-a-quarter. It took skill to conduct twenty-four interviews in a row, especially when the interviewees were only allowed three minutes in which to make themselves stand out from the crowd. But, somehow, Caesar managed it every year, largely thanks to the rapport he always had with the tributes and his ability to make even the most reluctant youngster open up.

"So how do you feel about your district partner?" Caesar asked at one point.

"Well, we'd never really spoken before, but she's all right," Lukas replied. "We've even formed an alliance already, us and one of the other girl tributes."

"One of the other girl tributes," echoed Caesar, as the camera cut away to the tributes sitting in the waiting area. He winked conspiratorially at Lukas. "Any chance we could know her name - or, at least, which district she comes from?"

Lukas shook his head. "I'd rather not say in front of the others, but she knows who she is." He cast a sideways glance at Till, sitting near the end of the row in her ivory dress, before turning his attention back to Caesar.

"Keeping us in suspense, eh?" said Caesar. "Good for you." Doubtless, people all over Panem were already speculating as to the identity of the tribute who had allied with the pair from District 9, though they would not have to wait long to find out. Tomorrow, the tributes would be in the arena. Caesar glossed over the drawbacks of forming alliances in the Games, namely that they could only last a few weeks at the most and invariably ended with at least one of those involved dying. Instead, he asked Lukas what he thought of the competition this year.

"Oh, the usual," Lukas replied. "Six tough Careers and a bunch of kids who don't look like they'd be much competition to anyone." Except for Pine and Forrest, both of whom had demonstrated considerable skill at handling axes during training, so much so that it was surprising neither of them had been invited to join the Career pack. Or perhaps they had been, but had declined the invitation, knowing they would never truly belong. The Careers often included tributes from other districts in their pack, especially if they had any useful skills, but it was not a secure position by any means. Often, the tributes from outside the Career districts would be killed as soon as they were of no further use to the pack.

Before Caesar could ask Lukas any follow-up questions, the buzzer sounded and Lukas returned to his seat next to Ruth, as Bessie walked up and sat down opposite Caesar. The District 10 girl, dressed in a dark green gown, came across as being very down-to-earth, though Ruth absorbed almost nothing when it came to the content of her interview. In fact, none of the last few interviews made much impression on Ruth, apart from when Till joked that, if she was waited on hand-and-foot for much longer, she might forget how to fend for herself. Finally, the interviews ended and the tributes stood with their heads held high as the national anthem began to play.

* * *

Septima and Thalia had just left the Training Centre to go to the Games Headquarters, which was where the escorts and mentors would be stationed for the duration of the Games. But, before he followed the two women, Ethan paused to say a few final words to Ruth and Lukas. "Listen," he told them, looking at them steadily, "if you want to be alive this time tomorrow, you'd better take my advice."

"Which is?" Ruth asked.

"Grab what you can at the Cornucopia, but don't take unnecessary risks. If I have to see both your tracker signals disappear, I'd prefer it if it wasn't on the first day." Before entering the arena, all the tributes would have tracking devices implanted into their arms to allow the Gamemakers to keep track of where they all were. There was a computer at the Games Headquarters which showed a map of the arena, with red dots to indicate the tributes; these dots were labelled with each tribute's district number, followed by an M or an F depending on the tribute's gender. For example, Ruth's dot would be labelled 9-F to indicate that she was the female tribute from District 9. And the tracking devices had been designed to stop transmitting the moment the tribute into whom they had been implanted died.

"OK," said Lukas. "But what do we do next?"

"Get away while the others are busy fighting and find shelter. Preferably near water - tributes have died from dehydration before now." Something Ethan was only too aware of; his Games had taken place in a baking hot desert, which had been bad news to any tributes who either failed to obtain water at the Cornucopia or did not know how to find this vital liquid in a seemingly arid environment. In the end, four tributes, including his own district partner, had ended up dying of thirst. Indeed, it was not unknown for tributes to succumb to natural causes, though this seldom happened as quiet deaths from exposure, dehydration and other such non-violent means were not what the audience in the Capitol wanted to see. They preferred it when tributes were killed in combat or, failing that, by a trap set by the Gamemakers.

"Well, I'd best be off," Ethan said at length. "Good luck to both of you." And, with that, he turned around and walked out of the door, wondering as he did so if District 9 might, just might, have three victors next year.

* * *

Ruth never knew how she managed to fall asleep with all the thoughts running through her head. Scenes from previous Hunger Games kept popping into her mind, though not in any particular order; it was as though someone had put together a random selection of clips and set it to play on an endless loop. She saw three kids engulfed by an avalanche, a boy shooting a girl in the back of the neck with an arrow, a pack of Careers chasing a boy down until he collapsed from exhaustion, whereupon all of them attacked him at once . . . These, and more, could be her fate in the coming weeks.

But, somehow, despite all her fears, she eventually nodded off, waking to find Lucretia standing over her with a simple shift in her hands. "Here, put this on," Lucretia said, handing the shift to Ruth. "You'll be able to dress properly in the Launch Room."

Without showing any embarrassment, Ruth pulled off her pyjamas and slipped the shift, a plain white garment with no collar, over her head. Lucretia then led her towards the elevators and into one of the cars which they used to travel to the twelfth floor, from which they could access the roof. Normally, tributes were not allowed on any floor which contained living quarters other than their own, but an exception was made on the first morning of the Games so that those from Districts 1 to 11 could access the hovercrafts which would take them to the arena.

Soon, Ruth and Lucretia were on the roof of the Training Centre, watching as a hovercraft appeared as if from nowhere. Ruth took hold of the ladder which dropped down and was shocked to find herself frozen into position, though Lucretia assured her that they did this to all the tributes. Still frozen, she was lifted into the hovercraft, where the tracking device was inserted into her arm, a moment Ruth had been dreading more than anything. She hated needles, but, in her frozen state, she was unable to close her eyes as the syringe descended towards her arm. Luckily, it only took a few seconds and she was free to move around again immediately afterwards.

* * *

The blacking-out of the windows in the hovercraft told Ruth that she was nearing her destination. The tributes were never allowed to see the arena from above; they would receive their first sight of it when they emerged from the tubes in the Launch Room. Beneath each arena, there was a network of underground rooms in which the tributes made their final preparations and were issued with the outfits they would wear in the arena. These were known as the Launch Rooms and, once the Games were over, they would never be used again, at least not by any tributes. The arenas and the Launch Rooms beneath them were preserved as historic sites after each Games and were popular tourist destinations for Capitol citizens. A typical visit to a former arena consisted of a tour of the Launch Rooms, ending with the one which had been used by the victor, followed by a tour of the arena itself, taking in the locations where the deaths had taken place. There were even re-enactments, in which key fights from the Games which had taken place in that arena were recreated. It was another example of how the people of the Capitol saw the Hunger Games as a form of entertainment, with no thought given to the youngsters who died as a result.

Soon, Ruth was in the Launch Room which had been allocated to her, getting ready for the moment when she would be launched into the arena. She had eaten in the hovercraft, not that she had had much appetite, so all she had to do was take a shower and clean her teeth, all the while trying not to think of the fact that this might be the last morning she ever saw. There were always several fatalities at the Cornucopia, though the exact number varied from year to year, which was why the first fight of the Games had come to be known as the bloodbath.

Every year, all the tributes were dressed in identical outfits which had been designed with that year's arena in mind. This year's outfit, which arrived as Ruth was drying herself after her shower, consisted of simple undergarments, a grey long-sleeved shirt, a dark green jacket with matching trousers, a black leather belt, grey socks and black lace-up boots. Lucretia helped Ruth to dress in the clothing, had her move around to make sure everything fitted comfortably, then produced something out of her pocket. "I believe this belongs to you," she said, handing it to Ruth.

Ruth looked down at the object in her hand. It was a bracelet of yellow wooden beads, the same bracelet Katie had given her on the day of the reaping. She had not seen it since she arrived in the Capitol; while the tributes were being prepped at the Remake Centre, their district tokens had been taken away for inspection to check that none of them could have any use as weapons. Only weapons obtained in the arena or via sponsors could be used during the Games, but there was usually at least one tribute, more often than not a Career, who tried to get round this rule by using something which contained a concealed weapon as their token. But the offending items were invariably confiscated. This year, however, none of the tributes had lost their tokens. There had been some concern about the one belonging to Shaun, a smooth pebble picked up on the beach in District 4, but it had eventually been agreed that, even if he did throw it at someone, it was too small to do much damage.

Ruth slipped the bracelet over her wrist and sat down beside Lucretia to begin the longest wait of her life.

* * *

With nothing else to do, Ruth sat sipping a glass of water and waiting for the inevitable call. She thought of her family back in District 9, watching the unfolding events on television, and wondered how they would cope if the worst happened to her. Especially Demmie, who had already lost one close relative to the Hunger Games and now faced the prospect of losing another. Every tribute wanted to win, but only one of them could; the rest were destined to die. Soon, twenty-three families across Panem would be mourning the loss of a young person who should have had their whole life ahead of them. Such was the Capitol's punishment for the attempted rebellion.

She toyed with the bracelet round her wrist, recalling as she did so how she and Katie used to sit at the kitchen table, making necklaces and bracelets. She thought of how Demmie had kept the ribbon which had been Blossom's token for all these years and wondered if her bracelet would soon be joining it in the box in her mother's wardrobe. Neither she nor Lucretia spoke; they just sat in silence and waited, and waited . . .

Then, just as Ruth was beginning to think she would be waiting here forever, a woman's voice was directed from the speakers in the Launch Room. "Tributes, prepare for launch."

She got to her feet and, taking a few deep breaths, turned to face Lucretia. "Well, this is it," she said, steeling herself for what lay ahead. She slowly walked towards the metal disc at the far end of the room and stood on it, holding her arms by her sides as Lucretia wished her luck. A glass tube descended over her and the disc beneath her feet slowly began to rise, carrying her into the arena.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the Forty-fourth Hunger Games begin!"

The voice of Claudius Templesmith, the man who had hosted the Hunger Games for the past three years, boomed out across the arena as the twenty-four tributes stood on the metal plates surrounding the Cornucopia. They had to remain on their plates for sixty seconds; anyone who stepped off even a fraction of a second too soon would trigger landmines and be blown to kingdom come. In fact, Ruth had seen it happen to a boy from District 6, who had been so eager to get to the bounty in the Cornucopia that he had jumped off his plate at the fifty-eight second mark. His body had been recovered in pieces.

She stood on her plate, taking in her surroundings as the clock ticked down. The Cornucopia was in the middle of a vast grassland; there were a few trees visible, but nothing you could call a forest or even a woodland. There was a range of mountains behind her and her view of what lay straight ahead was obscured by the huge golden horn. However, she could clearly see what the Cornucopia contained - food, extra clothing, backpacks, tents, weapons of all kinds. There was more than enough for all the tributes, but she knew most of the supplies would be claimed by the Careers. The others might get away with a backpack or a weapon if they were lucky, both if they were really lucky. She recalled what Ethan had said the night before: "Grab what you can at the Cornucopia, but don't take unnecessary risks." All right then, so what could she grab in the little time she would have before she had to get clear?

Ruth sized up her fellow tributes. She was standing on the plate between Watt from District 3 and Alice from District 8. Lukas was four plates to her left; because the Launch Rooms were allocated at random, tributes from the same district rarely ended up on adjacent plates. She could not see Till from where she stood, so the District 11 girl must be round the other side of the Cornucopia. And then there were the Careers, spread out among the other tributes but still the biggest threat in the arena. When they projected the faces of the tributes who had died in the bloodbath into the sky tonight, it was unlikely that anyone from Districts 1, 2 and 4 would be among them. Unlikely, but not impossible; the female tribute from District 1 had been among the seven fatalities in last year's bloodbath.

The seconds were ticking away. Soon, the gong would sound and the tributes would be free to move off their plates, free to start slaughtering each other . . .

* * *

The moment the gong sounded, Ruth was off her plate and sprinting towards the mountain of supplies. She snatched up a sword similar to the one she had used in her private session with the Gamemakers, followed seconds later by a medium-sized purple backpack, which she slung over her shoulder. Then, remembering Ethan's advice, she prepared to make her getaway before any of the others came after her.

"Lukas! Till!" she called to her two allies, searching frantically for them. Already, the other tributes were sprinting towards the supplies, each of them intent on grabbing what they could, even if they had to kill to get it. Ruth gripped the hilt of her sword, prepared to use it if she had to, but hoping that it would not be necessary; she still did not know if she would ever be able to bring herself to kill anyone.

Others, though, had no such qualms. Xanadu had armed herself with a crossbow and, as Pine ran towards an axe which looked as though it was just waiting to be claimed by someone from District 7, she was cut down by a bolt in the chest. Ruth could only look on in horror; Pine was still alive, coughing up blood as she lay on the ground, but there was no way she could survive such a wound. In just a few moments, the Forty-fourth Hunger Games would claim their first victim. And Xanadu had shot that bolt without blinking an eye, as though Pine was nothing more than a target at the Training Centre.

Ruth felt someone tugging on her arm and thought for a moment that she was going to have to defend herself. But, then, she heard a familiar voice telling her to "come on". It was Lukas's voice; he had managed to grab a couple of hunting knives, but had decided not to risk going for any of the backpacks. Instead, he had been looking around for Ruth so that they could get clear of the fighting, hoping desperately that she had not already fallen. Of course, the odds were still against either of them surviving the next few weeks, but, if they could get away from the Cornucopia, there was still a chance for one of them. He did not allow himself to think about whether that one should be himself or Ruth.

"Where's Till?" Ruth asked, as she and Lukas raced to get clear of the fighting. She could hear the sounds of battle behind her, but did not dare look back, knowing from years of watching the Hunger Games on television what she would see. It was bad enough seeing kids killing each other on-screen, but the reality was worse. She shook her head in an attempt to clear the image of Pine falling to the ground with Xanadu's crossbow bolt in her chest from her memory.

"Here!" Till called back, sprinting towards her two allies with a backpack over her shoulder. The three of them began to run, away from the pitched battle going on behind them, towards what was, at best, an uncertain future. The only thing any of them could be certain of was that, sometime in the next few weeks, at least two of them would die.

* * *

Ruth, Lukas and Till had no idea how long they had been running before fatigue forced them to stop and take a rest. With no sign of any other tributes nearby, they decided to use the time to go through the backpacks and see what they had in terms of supplies. Lukas, of course, had no pack, but the two girls were keen to see what theirs contained. There was no telling what the Gamemakers had put in the packs, but you could generally find something useful.

Ruth opened her pack first, finding a small sewing kit, a flask of water, two packets of dried meat, a cereal bar, a box of matches, a packet of iodine tablets and a length of wire. Not much, but it was more than Blossom had managed to obtain; she had escaped from the Cornucopia with nothing but a packet of nuts and a small dagger, which had been virtually useless when the Careers cornered her. Till, whose pack was slightly larger, had a sleeping bag, a water flask identical to Ruth's, two more packets of dried meat, a box of matches, a large piece of waterproof sheeting, a first aid kit and what looked like a pair of sunglasses. She smiled when she saw them. "Good. These'll come in useful tonight."

Ruth and Lukas looked at her in disbelief. Surely a pair of sunglasses would be pretty much use_less_ after dark. Seeing the looks on the faces of her allies, Till hastened to explain. "They're night-vision glasses. We wear them in the orchards if we have to continue working after dark - they're very strict about quotas back home." So much so that the agricultural workers of District 11 regularly had to continue harvesting long after the sun had gone down. Torches were used for night-time work, but the beams did not reach the highest branches, hence the night-vision glasses. "And we'll need them if we're going to keep watch tonight," she added, putting the glasses and the rest of the supplies back in her pack.

At the same moment, the sound of a cannon boomed out across the arena, indicating that the fighting at the Cornucopia was over and the other tributes who had survived the carnage had now dispersed. The sound was repeated again, and again, each shot representing one fallen tribute. At any other time during the Games, the cannons were fired the instant a tribute died, but not on the first day; the confusion and chaos of the bloodbath made it difficult to keep track of the fatalities, so the initial death toll was not revealed until after all the surviving tributes had left the scene.

"How many was that?" Lukas asked, as the last of the shots faded away.

"Ten," replied Ruth, who had been keeping count. Ten young lives lost, ten families faced with the difficult task of burying their children - and they were just the start. Over the next few weeks, most of the remaining fourteen tributes would also die, until only one was left. And she knew the odds that she would be that one were slim, besides which she also knew that, in order for her to win, both Lukas and Till must die. If only there was a way all three of them could win . . . But the Hunger Games did not work like that; the rule was that twenty-three tributes must die and only one could live.

* * *

As the day wore on, the three of them continued walking, keeping a careful eye out for the other tributes. Ruth kept a tight grip on her sword and Lukas gave Till one of his hunting knives, so that they could all defend themselves if they had to. Ruth remembered what Lukas had said on the train about how he would try to kill only in self defence. An admirable sentiment, but she couldn't help wondering how many other tributes had said something similar, only for all their high-minded principles to be forgotten the moment they stepped off their plates. And then there was the question of what would happen if their small band of allies was still intact when the field was reduced to a handful of players. Still, it was early days yet . . .

Near sunset, with no sign of any pursuers, they decided to make camp. They chose a stand of trees which looked as though it should conceal them and prepared to settle in for the night. Hungry after having not eaten since this morning but not daring to risk lighting a fire for fear of attracting the attention of their fellow tributes, they each nibbled on a piece of dried meat, split Ruth's cereal bar between them and drank a small amount of water from their flasks. As Lukas had no flask, Ruth and Till shared their water with him, though this meant the water would be used up more quickly. Tomorrow, they would have to keep an eye out for any signs of water; Ruth and Lukas hadn't forgotten Ethan's warning about the dangers of dehydration.

As night fell, the national anthem began to play and the Capitol seal appeared above the arena, heralding the nightly death recap, the point where the faces of any tributes who had died within the last twenty-four hours were projected into the sky. Ruth, Lukas and Till watched in silence as, one by one, the ten who had fallen in the bloodbath were revealed.

Freda from District 3 appeared first, followed by her district partner, Watt. Next came Vance, District 5's boy tribute, which meant the six Careers were all alive, as was Jennie, since (except for the private sessions) the female tribute from each district always preceded the male. Pine's appearance in the sky came as no surprise to Ruth; she had seen the District 7 girl fall to Xanadu's crossbow bolt. But then, Pine's district partner, Forrest, also appeared, something Ruth hadn't expected. This year's District 7 tributes had been the toughest of the non-Careers and she'd expected at least one of them to make it through the first day, possibly even into the final five. However, she did not have time to think about it before Forrest's face was replaced by that of Marc from District 8. District 10's tributes, Bessie and Todd, were next, followed by Harvey of District 11 and, finally, Lorna from 12. Then, the seal reappeared as the anthem finished with a flourish.

As the seal faded, Ruth and the others sat silently, unable to think of anything to say. All Ruth could think of was the ten dead tributes and how any dreams they might have had for the future had been cruelly snatched away. Not that Lorna had had much to dream about, coming from District 12, but she must have had family and friends, perhaps even a boyfriend. And then there was Harvey, who had been Till's district partner.

"I'm sorry," Ruth found herself saying to Till before she could stop herself.

"What for?" Till asked in reply.

"About your partner. I . . ." But Till cut her short.

"Don't be. It's not like Harvey and I were friends or anything like that. In fact, we'd never even spoken until the reaping." Which was just how it had been with Ruth and Lukas, except Harvey had never shown any indication of wanting to ally with his partner. Not that it mattered now . . .

"Come on," Lukas said at length. "We'd better try and get some sleep or we'll be too tired to fight off any attackers."

* * *

The three tributes only had one sleeping bag between them, but it was just large enough to accomodate two people - if you didn't mind being really close together. They quickly agreed that one of them would keep watch wearing Till's night-vision glasses while the other two slept and that they would swap over every few hours. That way, they would always have someone on guard and they would all have a chance to sleep.

"I'll take the first watch," offered Till.

"OK," said Lukas. "I'll go second and that'll leave Ruth to take the pre-dawn watch." It was risky to leave the camp unguarded; the Careers must be scouring the arena in search of victims by now. Still, there were eight tributes for the Careers to find and kill, eight tributes scattered all over a fairly large area. Even so, there was no sense in taking chances; tributes had been ambushed in their camps before.

Till put on her glasses and sat down in the spot where she, Lukas and Ruth had watched the death recap, keeping a tight hold on her knife in case she had to defend herself. In the meantime, Lukas and Ruth crawled into the sleeping bag and prepared to snatch a few hours' sleep. Neither of them had slept so close to a member of the opposite sex before, but no thoughts that they might end up doing something besides sleep ever occurred to them. They were too tired after having been up since dawn, not to mention on the move for several hours. Besides, as tributes, they could not afford to become anything more than allies.

"I hope you don't snore," she whispered to Lukas as she rested her head on his shoulder. Her feelings for him were entirely innocent, but it felt good to be so close to another human being at a time like this. She was in the middle of a Hunger Games arena, facing the prospect of having to kill or be killed, but at least she could trust Lukas and Till. Of course, there was still the possibility that it might come down to the three of them, but she pushed it to the back of her mind, knowing it was unlikely they would all last that long.

She thought about the tributes who were left after the bloodbath - all six Careers, plus both tributes from Districts 6 and 9 and one each from Districts 5, 8, 11 and 12. The other tributes could be anywhere in the arena, but she was certain the Careers would all be together and they would be on the hunt for victims. She had seen Career packs in action while watching the Games on television and knew how strong they could be. Even individually, Career tributes had to be taken seriously; Xanadu had demonstrated that at the Cornucopia when she shot Pine.

As had happened the previous night, Ruth somehow managed to fall asleep despite all the thoughts filling her mind. She was still asleep when Till, whose watch had passed without incident, woke Lukas for his shift.

* * *

Lukas was just about to wake Ruth up so she could take her turn on guard when something did the job for him. That something was a loud whooping sound made by around six people, accompanied by the boom of a cannon, a sound which meant only one thing in the arena. Some unlucky person had just become the thousandth tribute to die in the Hunger Games. In the pre-dawn light, Ruth crawled out the sleeping bag she and Till had been sharing and listened carefully, trying to work out who the victim might have been.

"All right!" called Xanadu's voice. "Got her right in the heart!"

"Yeah, they don't come back for more after that," agreed Juno. "Any stuff worth taking?" she added after a moment. Ruth heard two of the Careers checking their victim's body for anything that might be worth taking back to wherever they had made their base camp. After a couple of minutes, those doing the checking reported back, letting Juno know what had been found.

"No weapons," said Marina's voice. "But I've got her backpack."

"Good," said Juno. "Give it here." There was a pause, during which Marina handed the dead tribute's pack to Juno, followed by the sound of the pack being unzipped, then the contents being emptied onto the ground. "No," Juno said after a while. "Nothing here we don't already have back at camp. Let's get out of here."

Ruth listened as the Careers headed off in search of more victims, her mind running through what she had just heard. The tribute who had just died had been a girl - that much was obvious - but was she Jennie, Sarah or Alice? However, there was no time to think about it; the Careers sounded dangerously close and that meant Ruth, Lukas and Till had to get out of here quickly. "Come on," Lukas said, having evidently reached the same conclusion. "Get your stuff together and let's go."

But, before the three of them could move, Jet announced to his fellow Careers that he needed to "take a leak", then headed straight for the same stand of trees where Ruth and the others were camped. Ruth and her two allies could only watch as Jet stood in front of one of the trees and unfastened his trousers, not daring to move until he was through. The rest of the Career pack must still be nearby, ready to attack any tributes unlucky enough to cross their path. So Ruth, Lukas and Till could do nothing except wait and try to ignore the splashing sounds coming from nearby.

Presently, however, Jet refastened his trousers and rejoined the rest of the Careers. The six of them quickly left the scene, none of them guessing how close they had been to three more potential victims. At the same time, a hovercraft of the sort which had brought the tributes to the arena appeared and retrieved the body of the dead girl.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Knowing they could not live on dried meat, Ruth, Lukas and Till elected to spend the morning foraging for food. They had all spent time at the edible plants station at the Training Centre, where they had been taught how to recognise what was safe to eat. But they had also been warned not to eat anything unless they were absolutely certain it was safe and to be especially careful of berries and fungi; with that in mind, they made sure to avoid anything suspect. Till proved invaluable when it came to finding stuff that was edible; coming from District 11, she had been taught to recognise different plants from an early age. In fact, that was how she had earned her nine in her private session, by showing the Gamemakers a variety of wild plants that could be eaten safely. She had even used the plants to prepare a makeshift meal. With her help, Ruth and Lukas were able to gather several berries which grew on bushes scattered throughout the arena, as well as a handful of roots.

Towards mid-morning, they stopped and ate some of what they had gathered. It was a fine, sunny day and, sitting in the middle of the vast grassland that was this year's arena, they could almost forget that they were tributes in the Hunger Games. Almost, but not quite - they all knew the Career pack of Xanadu, Jet, Juno, Gaius, Marina and Shaun was out there somewhere, hunting for the other tributes. Someone had already been caught by the pack and none of the three allies wanted to be the next. None of them wanted to have their faces projected into the sky tonight. So they kept constant watch, alert not only for the sounds of their fellow tributes (especially the Careers) but for wild animals and any traps the Gamemakers may have rigged. No-one in the Capitol liked it when the Games became too dull, meaning more than a couple of days without any fatalities, so traps were set up to give the audience a little action and, maybe, force the tributes into a confrontation.

However, Ruth and the others encountered none of the other tributes all day, though they knew that could not last. Sooner or later, something would happen which would force them into a confrontation with the Careers, a confrontation none of them expected to win, though they were all determined not to go down without a fight. For that reason, they all kept a tight grip on their weapons, ready to use them if necessary.

At nightfall, they made camp in a clump of long grass. Not the most ideal spot, especially in a Hunger Games arena, but there were no trees nearby. They ate some more of the berries they had gathered that morning and watched as, accompanied by the strains of the national anthem, the Capitol seal appeared in the sky, closely followed by the face of Jennie from District 5. "Guess she's the one the Careers killed this morning," said Lukas, as Jennie's image faded from view, taking with it any hopes District 5 might have had of winning the Games in two consecutive years. There had been no other deaths today.

* * *

The third day in the arena was much like the second, except Ruth and the others were not woken by a cannon announcing the death of one of their fellow tributes. That, however, did not ease their concerns. Quite the reverse, in fact, since they all knew that, unless the people in the Capitol saw some action soon, the Gamemakers would take steps to ensure that they did. And that could only mean bad news for the thirteen youngsters in the arena.

This morning, however, Ruth and Till had other things on their minds. Both their flasks of water were running dangerously low, a fact which wasn't helped by the fact that they were both sharing their water with Lukas. But, as the only place where he would be likely to find a flask of his own was at the Careers' camp, which was certain to be heavily guarded, there was no other option. Even so, it did not take a genius to know that this situation could not continue; the water had to be replenished - and soon.

"We'd better keep an eye out," said Ruth, as they started out. "There's got to be a pond or a stream here somewhere." The trouble was, where did they start looking? She tried to recall what she and the other tributes had been taught at the Training Centre about finding water. As they were in a grassland, there were plenty of herds of grazing animals around, though none of them seemed to be moving in the purposeful way which indicated that they were heading for water. So all she and the others could do was start walking and hope that the direction they took would lead them to somewhere she and Till could refill their flasks. If they failed to find anything, all three of them would be dead from dehydration within a few days.

In order to conserve supplies, they used what little water they had as sparingly as they could, restricting themselves to one mouthful each at midday and another in the afternoon. But, even though Lukas drank from a different flask each time, this still depleted the water and, by sunset, both flasks were almost empty. They made camp under a large tree and ate some of the berries they had gathered the previous day; none of them wanted to drink the last of the water, but at least the juice from the berries helped to quench their thirst. But, like the water, the berries were running out fast and there was no telling when they would be able to obtain more.

In the meantime, they watched as the Capitol seal was projected into the sky. However, there had been no fatalities today, so none of their fellow tributes appeared.

* * *

It was just as the seal faded that Ruth noticed something floating to the ground. That something was a silver parachute and, as she went to pick it up, she noticed something attached to it: a basket woven out of straw. There was no doubt in her mind that it was a gift from a sponsor and that it had come from District 9; straw was an inevitable by-product of the grain industry and, as the Capitol had no use for it, no-one objected if the people of District 9 kept it for themselves. This, in turn, meant many of them had developed a talent for weaving straw baskets, though the attempts Ruth had made had met with only limited success. Before she and the others set off on their foraging expedition yesterday, she had tried to make a basket using the grasses which grew in the arena, but had ended up having to scrap her work. As a result, the three of them had not been able to gather as many berries as they would have liked.

"What is it?" Till asked, seeing, even in the fading light, that Ruth was removing something from a silver parachute.

Ruth showed her the basket. "I think Thalia sent it," she explained. "She must have seen how I messed up that one I tried to make yesterday." As Ruth's mentor, Thalia had the final say in which of the gifts purchased by her sponsors were sent to the arena and, seeing Ruth's less-than-successful attempts at basket-making, she must have decided to allow this gift through. It was the first gift from a sponsor any of the three allies had received.

"Thalia?" asked Till, examining the basket. It looked as though it would be useful for future foraging expeditions and she wondered how much it had cost. Probably more than most people in District 11 earned in six months - no doubt several inhabitants of District 9 had contributed towards buying this one basket.

"My mentor," replied Ruth. "A young woman with a patch over her left eye."

"Yes, I know who you mean," said Till. While the Games were on, the Capitol didn't just broadcast what was happening in the arena. Often, there were glimpses behind the scenes, including regular interviews with the mentors, especially as the Games neared their climax. And, with her eyepatch, Thalia was instantly recognisible, though she did not like to discuss the fight in which she had lost her eye. Indeed, very few of the victors were willing to relive their experiences in the arena and most of those who were came from the Career districts.

"Pity we can't get any sponsors to buy us a map - it might tell us where to find water," Lukas commented. But, of course, no map was forthcoming; the complete layout of the arena was a secret known only to the Gamemakers.

* * *

By mid-morning on day four, the water Ruth and Till had obtained at the Cornucopia was all gone, making the search for a lake or a stream even more urgent. And, since they only had a handful of berries left and they had, so far, not dared risk a fire to cook the roots they had gathered, the three tributes were forced to nibble on their strips of dried meat for sustenance. But this only made them even more thirsty and they thought longingly of the Training Centre, where they could get any drink they liked literally on tap. Ruth's favourite had been lemonade in a tall glass filled with crushed ice. Now, however, they must search for even that most vital of liquids - water.

For the first time, Ruth was beginning to appreciate just why the Hunger Games were called the Hunger Games. Being from one of District 9's better-off families, she had always been able to count on getting a good meal even before she went to the Capitol. For many people in all but the wealthiest districts, however, life was a constant struggle to find enough to eat. Some became so desperate that they were actually prepared to break the law in order to obtain extra food, even though the penalties for doing so could be severe. Once, Till's brother, Ferdy, had been caught stealing peas from the fields in District 11 and eating them straight out of the pods; for this, he had received a public flogging which left him confined to bed for a week. He had been eight years old.

But Ruth had never known such hardship until now. She may not have been as pampered as the Careers, but she had never had to wonder where her next meal was coming from, had never had to resort to obtaining food by illegal means. And, unlike so many other youngsters, including Lukas and Till, she had never had to take out tesserae in order to obtain extra grain and oil. But she told herself that she must not give up. If she did, if she showed any sign of weakness, people would think she was a lost cause, not worth sponsoring. So she tried to ignore how hungry and thirsty she was becoming and pressed on in the desperate search for water.

It was late afternoon when the three tributes heard voices coming from somewhere to their left; two people were heading their way, talking loudly. There was little doubt in Ruth's mind that these people were two of the Careers, though she could not yet tell which two. What she did know, however, was that no tributes from outside the Career pack would be so noisy, unless they wanted to bring the tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4 down on them. Speaking of which . . .

"Quick! Get out of sight!" she whispered to Lukas and Till. The three of them ducked into the long grass, just as Xanadu and Marina walked past. Both female Careers were armed to the teeth. Xanadu had her crossbow and a pouch of bolts, plus a knife tucked into her belt in case she had to fight at close quarters, while Marina had a three-pronged trident, a weapon often favoured by tributes from District 4. But the weapons were not what caught Ruth's attention; the thing that did was the three fish Marina was carrying in a net slung over her shoulder. And she could clearly hear Xanadu congratulating her fellow Career on her catch.

As Xanadu and Marina disappeared from view, Ruth thought over what she had just seen and heard. There was no doubt that they had been fishing - after all, Marina did come from District 4 - even though the Careers must surely have more than enough supplies back at their camp. Once the other tributes had either fled or died in the bloodbath, the ones from Districts 1, 2 and 4 would have had their pick of the items in the Cornucopia. Unless something happened to their supplies, Career tributes did not normally have to live off the land, which was another thing which often gave them an advantage over the others. But, Ruth guessed, Marina had been unable to resist the lure of freshly caught fish.

Ruth gasped as she realised the implications. The fact that Xanadu and Marina had been fishing meant there must be a source of water somewhere in the direction they had come from. And water was what she, Lukas and Till needed right now. They had no way of knowing how far they must travel in order to reach it, but, unless it rained soon, this looked like being their best chance. Of course, if the Careers knew about it, it was also risky, but the fact remained that none of them could last more than a few days without water.

* * *

Ruth and the others set off in the direction Xanadu and Marina had come from. It was easy to follow the trail, since the two girls had made no effort to cover their tracks, as evidenced by the trampled grass all around. Ruth frowned to herself; either Xanadu and Marina were, for all the combat training they had received, completely ignorant of basic survival techniques or, in their arrogance, they thought they had nothing to fear from the other tributes. Since they were Careers, however, she suspected it was the latter. Whatever the reason, it meant they had left a trail which led right to the nearest source of water.

Just as the sun was setting, Ruth, Lukas and Till reached a small lake. Since at least two of the Careers had already been here, they carefully checked the shore for any booby traps; it would be just like the Careers to rig something up to keep the other tributes from getting at the water in the lake. "I think it's safe," Till whispered after a while. She opened her pack and took out her empty flask, before making her way to the water's edge.

"OK, but be careful," said Ruth. Then, remembering something, she quickly joined her ally and took out the iodine tablets she carried in her own pack. "You'll need these to purify it," she added, recalling one of the lessons in survival she had been taught at the Training Centre. Water obtained at the Cornucopia was invariably safe to drink, but you could never be too careful with other sources. Therefore, it was always advisible to purify water obtained from lakes or streams before you drank it.

"I'll keep watch," offered Lukas, reasoning that, since he had no flask to refill, it was the best thing he could do. He pulled out his knife and stood scanning the surrounding area for signs of any approaching Careers. Not that he would stand much chance, especially if all six of them decided to show up . . .

* * *

Just as Till was crouching down to refill her flask, Ruth saw a spear flying towards her ally. "Look out!" she shouted, pulling Till away seconds before the spear caused the District 11 girl to become the twelfth tribute to fall in these Games. Glancing up, Ruth and Till saw Shaun running towards them, having already blindsided Lukas, readying another spear; from the look in his eyes, Ruth knew he was determined to make sure this one found its target. Well, not if she could help it! She quickly sized up the situation - Shaun was too strong for her to fight at close quarters, but she might be able to take him out from a distance. But with what? She only had her sword . . .

Just then, however, she glimpsed the spear Shaun had thrown moments earlier floating on the surface of the lake, caught in a bed of reeds. She quickly fished it out and, before he could cast his second spear, hurled his first straight at him. More by luck than judgement - Ruth had practised spear-throwing at the Training Centre, but had never aimed at a moving target before - the spear caught Shaun right in the stomach, causing him to fall to the ground. All thought that he was a human being with friends and family back in District 4 left her; the only thing she knew was that she had to make certain he was dead. She slowly advanced on him with her sword drawn and, standing over his prone body, thrust her blade deep into his heart.

The sound of the cannon signalling Shaun's death brought Ruth to her senses and she looked down at the lifeless boy, her hands shaking. She had just taken a human life; the sword she held was stained with blood, blood which, moments before, had been flowing through the youth who lay dead at her feet. Breathing heavily and trying not to look at the body of her victim, she made her way back towards the lake; she still had to refill her flask.

Just then, Lukas came running over to see what was happening. "I heard the cannon and thought . . ." he began, relieved to see that the two girls were safe. "What happened?" he asked, pointing to Shaun's body. This was, he realised, the first fatality among the Career pack and it looked as though one of his two allies was responsible. But where had that spear he could see sticking out of Shaun's stomach come from?

"He threw a spear at us," Ruth said, without any emotion in her voice. "Till and me. I threw it back at him and finished him off with my sword." She did not elaborate any further and joined Till at the water's edge to refill her flask. Trying not to think of what she had just done, she added an iodine tablet to the water in her flask, replaced the cap and sat back to wait for it to purify.

In the meantime, Lukas used his knife to cut off the pack Shaun had been wearing; the District 4 boy had no use for it now. Then, he, Ruth and Till withdrew a few yards to allow the Gamemakers to collect the body.

It was too late in the day to look for another campsite and, since the Careers knew about this lake, it was too risky to spend the night next to it. So Ruth, Lukas and Till made camp in the thicket of bushes where they had hidden while Shaun's body was removed from the arena. The anthem played and the seal appeared in the sky, followed by Shaun's picture. To her surprise, Ruth found that she could look at it without emotion, as though Shaun was just another tribute who had died in the Games, as though she had not been directly responsible for his death. This worried her slightly, but she told herself that, if she hadn't thrown that spear, it might well be herself and Till whose images were being projected. Kill or be killed . . .

She thought about the remaining five Careers. They too would have seen the death recap and would know one of their number was dead, though they would have no way of knowing who, or what, had killed him. All the same, she decided, it would not be safe to stay here too long. Tomorrow, she, Lukas and Till would have to try and put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Career pack.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

Shaun's backpack - now Lukas's - had been well-stocked with supplies. When Lukas opened it to see what the recently deceased Career had been carrying with him, he found a sleeping bag, a flask of water like the ones the girls had, more iodine tablets, three spare spearheads, some netting similar to that which Marina had used to carry her catch, a small frying pan with a folding handle and three apples. He grinned when he saw the fruit. "Looks like supper's on the Careers!" he joked, tossing two of the apples to Ruth and Till and keeping the third for himself. There was little doubt that the apples had been among the supplies at the Cornucopia; none of them had seen any apple trees since they arrived in the arena.

Ruth bit into her apple, trying not to think of the fact that it had belonged to a boy she had killed. She had known from the moment Septima called her name at the reaping that it might come to this, but that didn't make it any easier. It was all very well for the Careers, she thought, remembering how casually Xanadu had killed Pine on the opening day; they had been raised for this. But the same wasn't true of tributes from the other nine districts, which was one of the reasons many of the victors from those districts became addicted to drugs and alcohol in later life. Neither Ethan nor Thalia had gone down this path, but there was a mentor called Autumn from District 7 who spent most of her time in a drunken haze. It was said that she was trying to blot out the memory of the tributes she had killed.

Ruth hoped she would not become like Autumn, haunted by memories she could only escape with the help of a bottle of wine. But, as there were no guarantees that she would even get out of this arena alive, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind and concentrated on the immediate future. Tomorrow, she, Lukas and Till must move on and hope they didn't run into any of the remaining Careers. She knew her hitting Shaun with the spear had largely been a fluke; she might not be so lucky next time, especially now that she no longer had that spear. She could probably take Xanadu and Marina on with her sword, but Jet, Juno and Gaius were another matter.

* * *

The next morning, Ruth and the others prepared to move off at first light. They had no particular plans in mind, other than trying to keep themselves alive for as long as they could, but Ruth wanted to get as far from the lake as possible. It wasn't just the threat of the Careers, though that was part of the reason she wasn't keen on staying; the memory of the moment she killed Shaun had haunted her all night. She wanted to push that memory to the back of her mind and keep it there and that meant she had to leave the murder scene as soon as possible.

First, though, she had business to attend to, business involving the backpack Lukas had inherited from Shaun. Lukas had cut the straps when he removed it from the body of its former owner, meaning they would have to be repaired before the pack could be carried on someone's back again. Ruth took out the sewing kit she had found in her own pack and spent several minutes stitching the cut straps back together. Next, she took Shaun's spare spearheads - which neither she nor Lukas and Till had any use for - out of the pack and tossed them into the long grass.

"Come on," she said to her two allies. "Let's go." The three of them walked away without looking back and began to search for another source of water, one which hadn't already been claimed by the Careers. Even with one Career down, the remaining five were still a threat and it was still likely that the victor would be one of them. Not that the outcome was certain; every district had won the Games at least once, but, between them, Districts 1, 2 and 4 had produced twenty of the forty-three previous victors. Their tributes had advantages the others did not: better food, the Capitol's favour, combat training from an early age.

Right now, the best thing Ruth and the others could do was hope that the Careers would be occupied with hunting down the rest of the tributes. Ruth had not seen Sarah, Max, Alice and Kris since the opening day and only knew they were still alive because she hadn't yet seen any of their faces in the sky during the nightly death recap. But she knew that could not last, that none of the four would have a chance if they came up against the Career pack. Especially Sarah and Max, the two youngest tributes in the arena; the only way either of them could hope to win was to do what Sarah had said at her interview, keep away from the other tributes and try to outlast them all. The trouble was, winning by default was not looked on favourably in the Capitol, where everyone expected to see a huge, and usually bloody, battle at the climax of the Games.

The day proved long, but uneventful; the cannons remained silent and, when the seal appeared in the sky that night, no pictures of dead tributes followed it. That, however, only made Ruth uneasy. They were nearly a week in already and, aside from the bloodbath on the first day, there had only been two deaths. The people in the Capitol would be growing restless, demanding that the Gamemakers do something to liven up these Games - and, if it led to the death of at least one more tribute, so much the better.

For now, though, she, Lukas and Till were alive. They had managed to avoid a run-in with the Careers and they had found a stream to provide them with a source of water. And, with Till's knowledge of edible plants, they should be able to keep themselves going for a while longer, though there was no getting away from the fact that only one of them could get out of here alive.

* * *

Ruth, Lukas and Till decided to stay by the stream; they needed it for water and it also kept them from wandering aimlessly around the arena. With the last of the dried meat Ruth and Till had found in their backpacks gone, it soon became essential for them to live off the land. In her mind, Ruth heard the words Hippolyta had said on the first day of training: "Even the most skilled fighters can die of starvation if they do not know how to find food." All right, maybe she, Lukas and Till weren't exactly skilled fighters, but they still needed to find food if they were to have any chance in these Games.

While at the Training Centre, they had learned how to set a few basic snares to trap game. Some of these traps could be adapted for human quarry, such as the one which left the victim dangling from a tree by their ankles, an easy target for spears and arrows. The trouble was, in order to use that trap, you had to find a suitable tree and none of the scattered trees Ruth and the others had encountered so far were suitable. All the same, the three tributes decided it was time to put the trapping skills they had learned into practice. Using the length of wire from Ruth's pack, Till made three snares, which she set close to the stream. "If anything comes looking for a drink . . ." she explained, leaving the sentence unfinished and trusting Ruth and Lukas to work out what she meant.

". . . they'll become our dinner," filled in Ruth, watching as Till concealed the last of the snares. She had been wondering what she was supposed to do with the wire she had found in her pack and had been tempted at times to throw it away. But she resisted the urge, knowing that the Gamemakers never provided useless items. Everything found at the Cornucopia was of some use - if you knew what it was and how to use it. But Ruth had had no idea what the wire was for, though she had considered the possibility that it might be useful as a weapon. She remembered a girl tribute called Bianca from District 5, who had found a similar length of wire in her pack and used it to garrotte several of her opponents. Bianca had not looked like much of a threat, but, thanks to her improvised weapon, she had made it into the final seven before the axe-wielding boy from District 2 took her out.

But strangling people wasn't Ruth's style, so she had no use for the wire, at least not until the subject of hunting came up. The grassland arena was full of herds of grazing animals, deer for the most part, but Ruth and her two allies did not have any weapons which could be used to hunt them. And, even if they had, there would still be the problem of butchering and storing the meat. No, it would be better to go after smaller game, but that could be tricky with so much long grass around. In the end, it had been Till who suggested using the wire from Ruth's pack to set up snares.

When Ruth and Till returned to check the snares a few hours later, they found a rabbit caught in one of them, still alive and struggling frantically against the wire round its neck. Till finished it off with her knife, freed it from the snare and skinned it. "We'd better cook it," Ruth said when Till had finished skinning the rabbit. "The trapping instructor back at the Training Centre said raw rabbit meat can make you ill."

In the meantime, Lukas had not been idle. He had taken Ruth's basket, the one Thalia had sent her, and gone foraging, though he had been careful not to add anything to the basket unless he was sure it was safe to eat. Even so, he had managed to obtain some berries of the sort they had gathered on the second day in the arena, as well as three eggs from the nest of a ground-nesting bird; the rest of the eggs he had left for the parent birds to hatch out. When he caught up with the girls, he found them spit-roasting the rabbit over a campfire.

With some of the roots they had gathered on their first foraging expedition, cooked in Lukas's frying pan using a little fat from the rabbit, as an accompaniment, this was the first hot meal any of them had eaten since arriving in the arena. But, as they ate, they all knew there was no telling when they would have another chance. They had been lucky today - the Careers had not seen the smoke from their campfire - but they knew the next time might not be so fortunate. Still, Ruth reasoned as she finished off her share of the rabbit, at least they were all alive - for now.

* * *

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the arena, Alice was checking the pack she had obtained at the Cornucopia. It was one of the smaller packs, plain black and containing only a flask of water, a packet of iodine tablets, some night-vision glasses and a packet of crackers, which was now almost empty. She had not managed to get her hands on any weapons and had spent the last few days hiding among the long grass, trying to eke out her meagre supplies as far as she could, watching the sky each night to see how many of her fellow tributes were left. Her district partner, Marc, was already dead; she had seen his face in the sky that first night, along with those of five other boy tributes and four of the girls.

So far, she had managed to keep herself alive, but she knew that couldn't last; sooner or later, she would have to come out of her hiding place and look for food. There was a stream - the same stream Ruth, Lukas and Till had been following - near her refuge, which she had been using for water. She would have attempted to catch some of the creatures which lived in the stream and make a meal of them, but she had nothing to catch them with. No, if she wanted to replenish her supplies, she would have to go foraging.

Alice shouldered her pack, which contained only her iodine tablets, her water flask and her last few crackers. She had thrown the night-vision glasses away after, assuming them to be sunglasses, she tried to wear them during the day, only to find that they made it harder to see in daylight. Setting off, she tried to recall what she had learned about wilderness survival during her time at the Training Centre, as well as anything useful she might have picked up from watching previous Hunger Games. District 8 was one of the more urban districts, an ugly, industrial landscape with little in the way of plant life, which meant its tributes were often at a disadvantage when it came to fending for themselves in the arena.

She pictured her family watching the Games on the television in the run-down apartment where they lived. Her father and mother, weary from working several hours a day in a noisy textile factory; her mother had started going deaf lately, a common problem among the inhabitants of District 8. And, then, there were her nine younger siblings, the youngest of whom was only three months old, for whose sake she had been taking tesserae since she first became eligible. That year, she had had eleven entries in the reaping ball: one as required for all twelve-year-olds, plus ten more in exchange for tesserae for each member of her family. Since then, her mother had had two more children, which meant two more people for whom Alice had to claim tesserae. As a result, her name had been in the reaping which landed her in this arena forty-eight times.

"OK," she muttered to herself. "Let's try those trees over there." There were only a few scattered trees in this arena, but, assuming they weren't poisonous, they might provide her with some form of sustenance. If nothing else, she might be able to eat the inner bark of one of them, as she had seen someone do in a previous Hunger Games. Provided, of course, the bark peeled easily, since she had no knife.

But what Alice did not know was that the stand of trees she had earmarked bordered the area which the Careers had designated as their territory.

* * *

One wrong step was all it took. One wrong step and a net fell on Alice from the branches of a nearby tree, entangling her in its mesh. She struggled to free herself and had just succeeded in doing so when she saw two figures approaching. As they got closer, she saw who they were: Juno and Gaius, the powerfully built tributes from District 2 - and they looked like they meant business. Both of them were armed with heavy maces, which looked as though they could do a lot of damage to someone's skull.

There was nothing Alice could do; her chances of outrunning these two highly trained tributes were virtually zero. And, even if she had managed to obtain a weapon at the Cornucopia, she could not hope to take on the two Careers single-handed; even one-on-one against either Juno or Gaius, she was unlikely to win. "No! Don't!" she cried, feeling tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of never seeing her family again. But Juno and Gaius took no notice; they continued advancing until they loomed over her, their maces raised ready to strike.

Instinctively, Alice tried to shield her head with her arms, only for Gaius to bring his mace smashing down on them. She screamed in pain as the impact of the blow broke both her arms, leaving her completely unable to protect herself. If any other tributes had heard her scream, they did not come to her aid, either because they were afraid of being attacked themselves or because, since she was not part of any alliances, she was no concern of theirs. In any case, Alice had no time to think about it before Juno and Gaius hefted their maces over their shoulders and sent the heavy metal weapons, which were studded with spikes, crashing into her skull. Her last thought was of the carved wooden mouse, given to her by her boyfriend before she left District 8, which had been her token.

Juno and Gaius watched dispassionately as Alice lay dying at their feet, her skull fatally fractured by the blows from their maces. Even if she had had at least some chance of survival, it would have been unlikely that she would ever fully recover from such an injury, not that it mattered to Juno and Gaius. To them, she was just another tribute, another opponent to be killed off; it made no difference to them that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had been trained to kill and that was what they intended to do. They were even prepared to fight each other to the death if it came to it, even though they had known each other since they were babies. Such was the militaristic nature of their upbringing in District 2.

Alice gave one final moan and, seconds later, the boom of the cannon announced that both tributes from District 8 were now dead. Neither Juno nor Gaius spoke as they walked away from her lifeless body and headed back to camp.

* * *

Ruth, Lukas and Till had heard the cannon go off, but, until Alice's face appeared in the sky that night, they had no way of knowing whose death it signalled. As the nightly death recap ended and the Capitol seal faded, Ruth found herself pondering the unanswerable question which faced all tributes: who would be the next to go?

She counted off the tributes who had died so far on her fingers. Districts 3, 7 and 10 had lost both their tributes in the bloodbath, while Districts 5, 8, 11 and 12 had each lost one. Since then, three more tributes - Jennie, Shaun and now Alice - had fallen, making thirteen in total. Of the twenty-four youngsters who had been sent to this arena, more than half were now dead, one at her own hands, though she tried to avoid thinking of that. Eleven tributes remained, but, over the coming days and weeks, ten of them would also die.

Ruth thought of Sarah and Max; they had already lasted longer than Blossom had, but she knew it was only a question of time for them. Why, she found herself wondering, did the Capitol allow twelve- and thirteen-year-olds to be reaped? Why hadn't they set the lower age limit for the Games higher? She could only suppose it had something to do with the Games being a punishment for the attempted rebellion forty-four years earlier. The deaths of such young tributes must surely send out a pretty strong message to the districts.

"Ruth?" Till's voice cut through her silent reverie. "What's wrong? You seem awful quiet."

"Sorry," Ruth said, looking up at her ally. "I was just thinking that any of us could be next . . ." She nodded in the direction of the night sky where, moments before, Alice's face had been projected.

"Better not think about it," said Lukas, offering her some of the berries he had gathered that day. The possibility that it could be their faces in the sky one night loomed over all the tributes, but dwelling on it did nobody any good. All any of them could do was take each day in the arena as it came and try to survive as long as they could.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

On the eighth day in the arena, the storm began.

It was not an ordinary storm; Ruth could tell because it started so abruptly, the weather turning from fine and sunny to a heavy downpour in less than a second. She, Lukas and Till had been setting snares when the heavens suddenly opened and unleashed a torrent of rain so fierce that the three tributes were soaked in seconds. They had ended up having to shelter as best they could under the waterproof sheeting from Till's pack, crouching down and holding it over themselves like a cloak. They had seen storms before, but never anything like this; its suddenness and ferocity meant it could only have been generated by the Gamemakers in an attempt to make things interesting.

"What are the Gamemakers trying to do?!" Ruth demanded, as the storm continued unabated. "Drown us?!" Somehow, she doubted it - after all, it would take away the fun of seeing the tributes kill each other - but people had drowned in the Hunger Games before.

"Probably trying to flood the arena," Lukas suggested. "Force us all onto higher ground, like the mountains by the Cornucopia." That was the kind of thing which invariably happened in the Games. If the tributes were too spread out, if no-one had died for a while, the Gamemakers would take steps to force the tributes to come together and fight. And, if this storm continued for much longer, all the tributes would be forced to head for the mountains, the only piece of high ground in the arena. His thoughts turned to the other tributes, who must surely be suffering just as much as himself, Ruth and Till. No doubt the Careers had pitched some of the tents from the Cornucopia at their camp, but even these would provide little protection if the storm got too bad. As for Sarah, Max and Kris, they were probably completely exposed, unless at least one of them had obtained some sheeting similar to Till's

They sat in silence, watching the storm lashing the arena, before Ruth spoke again. "I wonder how the others are doing." But neither Lukas nor Till knew the answer any more than she did; the noise of the storm had drowned out any cannon shots that might have sounded in the last few hours. The only way they would know if anyone had died today was to wait until the seal appeared in the sky tonight and see if there were any faces.

As abruptly as it had begun, the storm ceased, the rain stopping so suddenly that it was as though someone had turned off a tap. Which was effectively what had happened, since the Gamemakers had the ability to manipulate the weather in the arena. If they had wanted to, they could have kept the storm going for days on end, but it had only lasted a few hours and had not caused the flooding Lukas had predicted. This puzzled Ruth, but she was grateful that the rain had stopped, that she and her allies could now emerge from their makeshift shelter.

But, when they got up, they found themselves confronted by something which made the storm pale into insignificance.

* * *

Till saw them first, a dozen lizards standing side-by-side, directly in front of the three tributes. Outwardly, they looked no different from ordinary lizards, but there was something about them that made her uneasy, something not quite right. And, when the lizards all moved forward in perfect unison, she realised what that something was. No animals behaved like that, moving with such mathematical precision. No natural animals, at least - which meant there was only one thing these lizards could be. "Mutts!" Till exclaimed, alerting Ruth and Lukas just as the lizards all reared up on their hind legs at once. Hissing, fangs bared, the reptiles began to advance on their prey, ready to rip them apart with teeth and claws.

Ruth quickly sized up the lizards. Till was right; they must be mutts. There was no other explanation for their precisely uniform movements, each one moving at exactly the same time as all the others. These lizards must have been bred by the Gamemakers in preparation for these Games, to be unleashed on the tributes in order to provide a little added "entertainment". It wouldn't be the first time, either; the Gamemakers had used mutts, or muttations to give them their full name, in this way before. Muttations were genetically altered animals which the Capitol had bred to use as living weapons during the Dark Days; afterwards, they had become a regular feature of the Hunger Games. As far as the people in the Capitol were concerned, you couldn't beat a good mutt attack.

Ruth, Lukas and Till reacted instinctively, drawing their weapons and preparing to face off against the lizard mutts. As she braced herself for the onslaught, Ruth heard the cannon go off and wondered for a moment which of the other eight tributes had just died. But she could not allow herself to wonder for long, not when her own life was threatened. If she survived this, she would know who the dead tribute was tonight.

The lizards divided into three groups of four, each group surrounding one of the three tributes as they prepared to attack. Ruth thrust her sword forward and sent it straight through the lizard directly in front of her, smiling with satisfaction as the reptile fell to the ground, dead. But her elation was short-lived; seconds later, the sharp pain of reptilian teeth biting into her leg reminded her that she still had three more lizards to contend with. And, to make matters worse, another lizard had suddenly appeared to take the place of the one she had killed.

"Shit!" she heard Lukas mutter, as he took out a lizard with his knife, only for it to be replaced seconds later. He and Till were not faring much better; no matter how quickly the lizards were killed, others took their place within seconds. And it couldn't be a coincidence that they had appeared right after the storm, not in the Hunger Games. The Gamemakers must have sent the storm to pin the tributes down, then unleashed the lizards on the youngsters as they emerged from whatever shelter they had found when the storm abruptly ended. No doubt, Ruth thought, the rest of the tributes were currently in the same situation as herself, Lukas and Till.

"How many more are they going to send?!" Till demanded, as the lizards continued their relentless assault.

"Don't know!" Ruth called back, holding her sword in front of her in an attempt to fend off the attacking reptiles. One thing was certain, however; the lizards were giving those watching the Games on television the kind of show which always went down well in the Capitol, though less so in the districts, where people had to watch their own loved ones fighting for their lives.

* * *

Moments later, the thing Ruth had dreaded from the moment the attack began happened. Till, wounded and bleeding, her clothes ripped by the lizards' claws, stumbled and went sprawling. At the same instant, the lizards completely forgot about Ruth and Lukas, all of them turning their attention to the girl who lay helpless on the ground. And Till was now weaponless, having dropped her knife when she fell, not that it would do her much good if she had kept hold of it.

"Till!" Ruth cried, preparing to cleave a path through the lizards with her sword and rescue her ally. Even though she knew it was futile, she felt she had to try. She could not bear the thought of what those lizards were going to do to Till; she had seen tributes fall to mutts before and it was not a pretty sight.

But Lukas pulled her away. "There's nothing we can do," he told her. "But at least this will give us a chance to get away." From the moment he, Ruth and Till made their alliance, they had known it would only be a temporary one, that at least two of them would inevitably die in the arena, but they had tried to avoid thinking about it as much as possible. Now, however, he and Ruth would have to flee and leave Till to her fate. Alliances could only go so far in the Hunger Games, where the fundamental rule was that twenty-three must die and only one could live. And that, particularly in the later stages of the Games, often meant tributes had to preserve their own lives at the expense of an ally. It could even mean tributes who had been allies having to fight each other to the death, though most alliances ended before such a situation could arise.

Ruth did not look back as she and Lukas fled the scene, but she could clearly hear what was happening behind her. The lizards were hissing in unison as they converged on their prey, moving in for the kill. Then came a sound which made Ruth feel physically sick, the sound of Till screaming in agony as the reptiles attacked her with teeth and claws. Images of mutt attacks from previous Games flashed through her mind - a boy reduced to a skeleton by flesh-eating rodents, a flock of birds whose beaks delivered a deadly poison when they pecked their victims, a girl caught in the web of a giant spider . . . Abruptly, Till's screams cut out and Ruth knew she must have lost consciousness, that the cannon signalling her death would sound at any moment.

And there it was, the sound which meant this year's victor, whoever they might be, would not be from District 11. The cannon boomed out across the arena, indicating that Till had succumbed to her injuries, that fifteen tributes were now dead. Nine still remained . . . No, eight - the cannon had just fired again, meaning someone else had died just minutes after Till. But Ruth and Lukas had no way of knowing who it might be; it could be any of the others and they still didn't know the identity of the tribute who had died while they and Till were preparing to face off against the lizard mutts. However, they would find out tonight, when the faces of all three dead tributes were projected into the sky.

For now, though, the only thing which mattered to Ruth and Lukas was putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the lizards.

* * *

Presently, failing light and Ruth's leg throbbing uncomfortably where the lizard had bitten it forced the two tributes to stop running. There was no sign of the lizards, but neither of them wanted to spend the night out in the open, not when the ground was still damp from the storm. Luckily, there was a stand of trees, which looked similar to the one that had been their campsite on the first night in the arena, nearby; it wasn't ideal, but they both agreed it was better than nothing. And, if they went right into the trees, the ground might still be relatively dry.

They set off in the direction of the trees, but Ruth soon found that her injured leg made walking a painful trial. She had not given her leg a second thought during the mutt attack and their subsequent flight, but now that the danger was over, there was nothing to distract her from her pain. Lukas, watching her hobbling along, found himself faced with a dilemma of the sort which often faced tributes at this stage in the Games. His instinct was to help her, but he was well aware that they couldn't both be victors, that one of them must die. Maybe he should take her out now, stab her with his knife; it wouldn't be the first time a tribute had killed their district partner. On the other hand, he had sworn not to kill except in self-defence . . . In the end, instinct won out and Lukas began to take off his backpack.

"Quick," he told Ruth. "Take off your pack and I'll carry you over there." He nodded towards the nearby trees. Ruth did as she was told, but couldn't help looking at him questioningly; all their stuff was in the packs. "Don't worry," he said, lifting her up in his arms, "I'll go back for the packs."

Once Lukas had settled Ruth among the trees, he headed back to where they had left the backpacks, returning moments later with a pack in each hand. He handed Ruth her pack, then sat down to examine his own, the one he had taken from Shaun's body. In the process, he discovered the remains of a gopher which he, Ruth and Till had snared the previous day and roasted over a campfire. "Supper?" he asked, handing Ruth some of the meat, which was still attached to the bones. "It's cold gopher meat left over from yesterday."

Ruth didn't really feel like eating, not after what had happened today, but she took the meat anyway, knowing there was no telling when she and Lukas would be able to obtain more. Besides, this was the first time she had eaten all day, what with the storm and the lizard mutts. So she sat pulling the meat off the bones with her teeth, trying to get her mind off the events of the day, only to find that her throbbing leg served as a constant reminder. "I don't suppose you've got anything for my leg?" she asked, as she finished the last of the gopher meat Lukas had given her.

But Lukas shook his head. "Till had the first-aid kit," he reminded her. Which meant the first-aid kit, along with everything else Till had carried in her pack, would be long gone from the arena. When a tribute died, anything they had been carrying with them was removed from the arena along with the body, unless another tribute claimed it as Lukas had done with Shaun's pack. In Till's case, however, there had been no time; he and Ruth had had no choice but to get away as quickly as possible. "But," he added in a desperate attempt to reassure his remaining ally, "your leg might not be as bad as you think."

Somehow, Ruth doubted that - after all, the lizard had bitten her pretty hard - but she had no time to think about it. The death recap was beginning and she and Lukas had a very personal reason for watching it tonight. They looked up at the sky as the Capitol seal appeared, followed by the faces of the three tributes who had fallen during the course of the day. First came Juno from District 2, the second Career to die in these Games; her face was quickly followed by Till's, the projected image of the District 11 girl smiling down on her two allies. Finally, the recap ended with the face of Kris from District 12, before the seal returned and the anthem ended with its usual flourish.

* * *

Ruth and Lukas sat silently, lost in thought. Till's death had brought home just how deadly the Games into which they had been forced were. Either or both of them could be next, especially now that only a few tributes, half of whom were the four surviving Careers, were left. Of the original pack of six, Xanadu, Jet, Gaius and Marina were still alive; both tributes from District 1 and one each from Districts 2 and 4 had made it into the final eight . . . Suddenly, Ruth broke the sombre silence. "At least we won't have to worry about the Careers for a while."

"What do you mean?" asked Lukas. The Career pack might have been depleted, but the four who remained were still a threat, still the strongest tributes in the arena. And he knew from years of watching the Hunger Games that, even at this stage, the Careers would not give up, not while there were still other tributes to hunt down and kill.

"Well, that girl from 2, Juno . . ." Ruth had overheard Marina address Juno by her name at the Training Centre, while the two girls were practicing their spear-throwing. "She was strong. In fact, she was probably the strongest girl here. And the only tributes left apart from ourselves and the Careers are those two kids from 6 - and I don't think they could have taken her out. And the Careers don't usually start fighting among themselves until they've wiped out everyone else . . ." Often, as the Games progressed and the tension increased, the tributes in the Career pack would begin to turn on each other, though it seldom happened as long as there was at least one other living tribute.

"So?" Lukas still failed to see what Ruth was getting at.

"So I'm guessing some of those lizards that attacked us also attacked the Careers," Ruth told him. "And that's what killed Juno." She did not mention Till, as the memory of her recently fallen ally was too painful. "So, assuming the Careers tried to fight the lizards, they'll probably be wounded . . ." As if on cue, her leg throbbed painfully, causing her to wince. " . . . which means we'll probably have a bit of breathing space," she went on, trying to forget how much her leg pained her. With no means of treating the injury, her only hope was her sponsors and she knew enough about the Hunger Games to know that sponsors did not send gifts to the arena out of pity. They did it because they admired your spirit, your determination not to give up no matter how painful your injuries were. And that lizard bite was very painful, though she had had no time to examine it yet.

And then there was Kris. Had he been killed by the lizard mutts like Juno and Till, or had he died by some other means? Either way, it meant District 12's long losing streak would continue for another year; in forty-four years they had only managed to produce one victor and very few of their tributes lived past the first week. Ruth recalled the hopeless expressions she had seen on the faces of Kris and his district partner, Lorna, when she watched the District 12 reaping. For youngsters from that district, having their names drawn from a reaping ball pretty much amounted to a death sentence; underfed and undertrained, District 12 tributes stood virtually no chance in the arena. Kris had done well to survive as long as he had; last year, both tributes from his district had been dead within two days.

* * *

Ruth and Lukas decided it would be best if they got some sleep, but Ruth soon found that sleep was proving elusive. It wasn't just her injured leg causing her pain, though that was part of the problem; she kept playing over the events of the day in her mind. Again and again, she saw Till stumbling, followed by the lizard mutts converging on her . . . If she, Ruth, had fought the reptiles instead of fleeing like Lukas had told her, Till might have survived. Logically, Ruth had always known something like this was bound to happen, but she hadn't been prepared for the emotional impact of losing an ally. And, rightly or wrongly, she felt she was partly to blame. She fingered the bracelet on her wrist, remembering the day Katie had given it to her as a district token. Had Till received a token from her own sister, Arabelle? Ruth had never thought to ask and she would never have a chance now.

"Ruth?" Lukas's voice distracted her from her thoughts. "Can't sleep?" he asked her from where he lay beside her. There was no danger of anything improper happening between the two tributes; they did not harbour such feelings towards each other. They just needed the comfort of human contact.

"I keep thinking about Till," Ruth confessed, recalling the moment the cannon had sounded to announce the District 11 girl's death. She was not sorry that Juno was dead - it just meant one less Career to worry about - and she had never even spoken to Kris. But Till had been her ally from the first day of training . . .

"Best not to," Lukas told her. "I think we should just keep going and concentrate on keeping ourselves alive for as long as we can." He did not remind her that they had no way of knowing how long that would be, nor that they couldn't both survive the Games. "That's what Till would want."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

Now that only eight tributes remained out of the original twenty-four, the betting was really beginning to hot up as the residents of the Capitol eagerly awaited new developments in the arena. Seven districts were now out of the running, but vast sums of money were being wagered on which of the remaining five would produce this year's victor. Naturally, the four surviving Careers - Xanadu, Jet, Gaius and Marina - were all hotly tipped, especially Xanadu. Since her interview, when she had told the whole of Panem that she was the daughter of a former victor, people had been talking about how great it would be if two generations of the Keller family won the Games. Especially since they came from District 1, one of the districts where being a tribute was considered a great honour . . .

Reporters were dispatched to each of the districts which still had at least one living tribute to interview the tributes' friends and families. The resulting programme was scheduled for broadcast in the early evening on the ninth day of the Games; needless to say, it was mandatory viewing. And it was also mandatory for anyone who was asked to give an interview to do so, even if they were only four years old, as was the case with Jet's niece, Sparkle. She sat with her mother - Jet's older sister, Ruby - answering the reporter's questions with all the innocence of a small child. At one point, she held up a picture she had drawn of Jet being crowned on victory night.

"And do you think he really can win?" asked the interviewer.

"Yeah, I think so. And, when I'm older, I'm gonna be a tribute too and win the Games." Already, like many young children in the Career districts, Sparkle was starting to buy into the glamour of being a tribute in the Hunger Games. She did not know that, for children in the poorer districts, being selected for the Games was something to be feared.

This year, the only non-Career districts with tributes in the final eight were Districts 6 and 9. Somehow, despite being the youngest tributes in the arena, both Sarah and Max had managed to survive against the odds, but there was little chance of either of them lasting much longer. The strain on the face of Sarah's mother when she was interviewed, looking obviously pregnant, told its own story. It had been a long time since any tributes less than fourteen years old had made it this far; they were usually taken out much earlier. But, the longer a tribute remained in the Games, the stronger the opposition became and, while Sarah and Max had been lucky so far, their luck couldn't hold forever.

In District 9, the Waterhouse and Green families were called upon to be interviewed about Ruth and Lukas, as were the two tributes' closest friends. The interviews took place in the Justice Building, which none of them had entered since the day of the reaping when they had said goodbye to their loved ones. They sat in the main lobby - Demmie and Neil, Katie and Alf, Mrs Green and her four younger children, Dorcas, Flora and Elly, two siblings named Milton and Grace who were childhood friends of Lukas - waiting to be called for their interviews. But the two sets of family and friends made no attempt to socialise with each other, not when they knew that, sometime in the next few days, either Ruth or Lukas or both would die; it was just a matter of time.

* * *

Waking, Ruth opened her eyes and looked around. Judging by the sun, it was already mid-morning, not that she had any way of knowing for sure. She looked around for Lukas, but saw no sign of him; his backpack was missing too, as was the basket Thalia had sent her. That was what assured her that nothing bad had happened to him, that he must have taken the basket and gone foraging. "Well, he might have asked my permission," she said, voicing her thoughts out loud. Not to mention that he had gone off on his own when they had always made a point of sticking together; that, plus their alliance with Till, had kept them alive so far. But Till was now dead, killed by a pack of lizard mutts, and she, Ruth, had been injured herself while fighting the reptiles.

She rolled up her trouser leg and examined the bite wound left by one of the lizard mutts. It was not large as wounds go, but it was painful and Ruth shuddered as she imagined the agony Till must have gone through before the lizards killed her. She knew the injury had to be treated somehow, but with what? Neither she nor Lukas had any medical supplies in their packs. She supposed she could try washing the wound with water from her flask - since the water had been treated with iodine, it might help guard against infection - but she needed that water for drinking and, thanks to the lizards, she and Lukas had lost track of the stream they had been following.

The sound of movement nearby startled her. Instinctively, her first thoughts turned to the Careers, who would surely like nothing better than to find her like this, crippled and barely able to defend herself. She had her sword, but that would do her little good when she couldn't even stand up unaided . . . But, at that moment, her face broke out in a smile of relief as Lukas appeared with her gathering basket on his arm. "Lukas! I thought you were . . ."

"One of the Careers?" Lukas asked, guessing what she was going to say next. "Nah - they're all at their camp. I just went out to look for food." He handed her the basket, which contained a handful of roots and berries. "And, before you ask, I only gathered stuff we've eaten before, so it's all safe."

"That's good. Because we'll have to be careful now that we don't have Till's knowledge to draw on." Ruth winced as her leg throbbed painfully, reminding her of the fate which had befallen their ally from District 11, the same fate which had more than likely befallen Juno and, possibly, Kris. Yesterday had seen the most deaths since the bloodbath, three tributes dead in one day. She looked down at the ground, remembering the moment Till's face had appeared in the sky the previous night, thinking of the three most recent victims of the Hunger Games whose bodies must now be on their way back to their respective districts. And, just a few days later, the funerals would take place.

Ruth had witnessed many tribute funerals over the years; everyone in each district was required to stand and watch as the coffin was carried through the streets, the family of the dead tribute walking behind it. It was always a difficult scene to witness, but anyone who did not line the streets to witness a tribute's final journey risked being arrested. In this way, the people of Panem continued to be reminded of the power the Capitol held over them; not only did they have to watch their youngsters die on live television, they also had to watch as the body of each dead tribute was taken to their district's Burial Ground. Even those for whom it was a painful reminder of a time when they had been among those following the coffin were not exempt. The body would then be laid to rest in an area of the Burial Ground reserved for the purpose, the grave marked with a simple stone bearing the tribute's name and the number of the Games in which he or she had fallen.

Ruth shook her head to dismiss the thought of funerals and tried to concentrate on the fact that, for the time being, she and Lukas were alive. But knowing that there were only eight tributes left reminded her that their alliance could not last forever. Sooner or later, unless one or both of them died by some other means, they would have to face up to the inevitable. "Lukas," she said, "what if we're the last two left?" She knew it was unlikely, but it was a possibility any tributes who formed an alliance had to face.

Lukas looked her closely, thinking of the day their names had been drawn from the reaping balls, forcing them into these cruel Games. "I guess we'll just have to fight each other," he told her.

Ruth nodded. "Just promise me one thing."

"Sure. What is it?"

"If you win, make it . . ." Ruth looked into the eyes of the boy sitting beside her, trying to imagine what it would be like to look into them when he was about to take her life. "Make it quick." The last thing she wanted was to suffer a lingering, agonising death like Till; given the choice, she would much rather be taken out as quickly as possible.

"Of course I will." Lukas reached towards Ruth's hand and squeezed it tight.

* * *

Both tributes knew, however, that it was unlikely such a situation would arise. Left untreated, Ruth's leg wound would develop blood poisoning which would eventually kill her. But neither of them had so much as a sticking plaster; the only place they would be likely to find a first aid kit was at the Careers' camp and Lukas wasn't about to risk raiding it. Juno and Shaun were dead, but the four remaining Careers were still a threat. Lukas had seen tributes who were brave - or foolish - enough to steal supplies from the Careers before and knew they were almost invariably caught and killed sooner or later.

The day passed without incident; the mutt attack had sated the audience's bloodlust for the time being. But it was only a temporary reprieve, one which the Gamemakers could bring to an end at any time. Often, in the latter stages of the Games, they would invite the remaining tributes to a "feast", which was really an excuse for a pitched battle. Alternatively, they would trigger a "natural" disaster in order to force all the tributes into one area, thereby increasing the chances of a fight. Either way, it meant more dead tributes, more faces projected into the sky. And the process would continue for however long it took until all but one of the tributes had fallen.

Today, however, Ruth and Lukas could almost forget that they were in a Hunger Games arena. Almost, but not quite; Ruth's injured leg was a constant reminder of the danger they still faced, a danger which would only increase from now on. So far, except for the time Ruth killed Shaun, they had managed to avoid any confrontations with the other tributes, but they knew that situation could not last forever. Lukas had scouted the Careers' camp from a safe distance, keeping his hand on his knife in case he had to defend himself, and knew they were still recovering from the mutt attack; he had seen Xanadu with her arm in a bandage. But, thanks to the fact that the Careers had something he and Ruth did not, namely medical supplies, it would only be a matter of time before they were back in the Games.

As night fell, the anthem began to play and the seal appeared in the sky. But, for the first time since arriving in the arena, neither Ruth nor Lukas so much as glanced at it. They knew there would be no faces tonight.

* * *

By the next morning, Ruth's leg was throbbing constantly. Examining it, she and Lukas discovered that it was already showing signs of becoming infected, which presented Lukas with a dilemma. He knew what would happen to Ruth if the injury was left untreated, but he also knew only one of them could survive the Games. And, of the two of them, he was currently the one who stood the most chance. Perhaps the time had come for him to break off the alliance, to walk away and leave his district partner to die. But, then, he remembered watching tributes die from blood poisoning in previous Games; it was not a pretty sight. For several seconds, he and Ruth stared helplessly at the wound, wishing there was something they could do, but knowing that, without medical supplies, there was nothing they could do.

Except . . . Despite his promise not to kill except in self defence, Lukas found himself gripping his knife, preparing to use it on Ruth. Better a quick death from a slit throat or a knife through the heart than days of suffering - and Ruth had told him yesterday that, if she had to die, she wanted it to be as quick as possible. But, at that moment, a sudden commotion outside their camp, caught the attention of both tributes, distracting them from their immediate troubles. Two male voices could be heard shouting to each other nearby, voices which could only belong to Jet and Gaius; the only other male tribute still alive was Max and his voice had not yet broken.

"There he goes - the little thief!"

"Yeah, I knew someone was taking our stuff. There's no other way a kid like him could have lasted this long."

"You think that girl from his district was involved?"

"Who cares? All I know is that we caught that brat from 6 red-handed and now he's gonna pay." Gaius, the tribute who had just spoken, slowly ran his index finger across his throat with obvious relish. He and Jet were on the hunt - and Max was their quarry. It did not matter to them that Max was only twelve years old; as far as they were concerned, he was just another opponent to be taken out, as sixteen opponents had been taken out already. Once he was dealt with, it would simply be a matter of eliminating his district partner, plus the pair from District 9, leaving the four Careers to fight for the crown. They had even planned it all out already; Jet and Gaius were going to take each other on in single combat, as were Xanadu and Marina, and the winners of those fights would then fight each other until one of them emerged as the victor in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games.

Of course, they would have to wait until Xanadu's arm had recovered from the lizard bite. In the meantime, Jet and Gaius continued their pursuit of Max, the tribute who had had the audacity to steal from the Careers. Things had been going missing from their stash of supplies from day one, but, until now, the Careers had had no way of knowing who the thief was. Now, however, Jet and Gaius had caught Max helping himself to various items and had decided to use it as an excuse to take him out, not that they needed any. Both boys had their weapons with them - Gaius had his mace, while Jet had the axe which Pine had tried to claim at the Cornucopia before Xanadu put paid to the District 7 girl - and they meant to use them.

* * *

Ruth and Lukas sat in sombre silence as Jet and Gaius moved off. It was obvious what had been going on. Max's strategy had been to steal supplies from the Careers' camp, which suggested that he had a talent for avoiding traps, since the Careers invariably rigged something up to keep the other tributes from getting at their stash. But he must have been careless or become overconfident and, as a result, Jet and Gaius had caught him in the act. Leaving Xanadu and Marina at the camp, the two male Careers had set off in pursuit of the younger boy, intending to make him pay with his life.

A terrified scream up ahead told Ruth and Lukas that Max had been caught. Moments later, Jet and Gaius reappeared, dragging their victim between them; rather than kill Max on the spot, they had obviously decided to postpone the moment, to let him anticipate the end for as long as possible. Max was helpless in the grip of his captors, unable to break free, his pleas for mercy falling on deaf ears. Ruth and Lukas could do nothing but watch; had they both been fit, they might have attempted to take Jet and Gaius on to give Max time to escape, but Ruth's injured leg ruled that out. Besides, when it came to the Hunger Games, you could not afford to be too sentimental about your fellow tributes, no matter how young they were. Not if you wanted to survive . . .

"Kneel, you worthless maggot!" Gaius commanded. And Max, frightened tears tracing their way down his cheeks, slowly lowered himself to his knees, as Gaius produced some rope from his backpack and tied the terrified twelve-year-old's hands behind his back. There followed a brief discussion between the two Careers, which Ruth and Lukas could barely hear, though it seemed to be about which of them was going to make this kill. During the debate, a wet patch suddenly appeared on the front of Max's trousers and a puddle formed on the ground before him, as terror of his inevitable fate caused him to lose control of his bodily functions.

Jet slowly stepped up behind Max and raised his axe. Knowing what was about to happen, Ruth and Lukas quickly closed their eyes as tight as they could. But there was no shutting out the sounds which followed - a dull thud which sounded almost innocuous but could only be one thing, then the boom of the cannon. "He won't be stealing from us again," Ruth heard Jet say, as she and Lukas continued to hide in the trees which had been their campsite for the past couple of nights.

"Good," agreed Gaius. "Seventeen down, six to go. Let's get out of here."

And, with that, he and Jet walked away as though nothing had happened. Ruth waited until they were gone before she risked opening her eyes - and immediately wished she hadn't. Max's body lay on the ground, his hands still tied behind his back and his head about two feet away from the rest of him. Even though it was too far away for her to see clearly, she felt physically sick. It wasn't the first time a tribute had been beheaded - and nor would it be the last - but she had never seen a headless body in the flesh before, only while watching the Hunger Games on television and it sickened her even then. And Max had been so young . . . But, she told herself, she had to get over it; such scenes were an inevitable part of the Games and she might witness something even worse before she was through here. She watched as a hovercraft appeared, the claw dipping down twice to retrieve first Max's body, then his head, before disappearing once more. Max was now on his way back to the Capitol, where his head would be reattached to his body before he was returned to District 6. There were now just seven tributes left in the arena.

* * *

At the Games Headquarters, Thalia had been watching the unfolding drama of the last couple of days with growing concern. Ruth, the tribute for whom she was responsible, was hurt and, while the wound would not be fatal under normal circumstances, she was well aware of the dangers of blood poisoning. And, it seemed, neither Ruth nor Lukas had found any medical supplies in their packs; not only that, they had lost their ally (who had been carrying a first aid kit) in the same mutt attack which had caused Ruth to be injured. Somehow, Thalia realised, she would have to get something which could heal Ruth's leg, but it would be very expensive at this stage in the Games.

Nonetheless, she had to try. Perhaps Ruth's sponsors had raised enough money to pay for a pack of sterile dressings; after all, Thalia hadn't sent any gifts to the arena since the basket on the second day. But the cost of gifts increased the longer the Games went on and medical supplies were expensive from the start. Now, ten days in, the same amount of money which would have been enough for a complete first aid kit at the beginning might, if you were lucky, stretch to a tube of ointment or a couple of bandages. Thalia was just about to head down to the Sponsors' Liaison Area to check on how much money was in Ruth's pool when the elevator behind her opened and a young woman with scarlet hair emerged.

"Excuse me," she said. "You are Ruth Waterhouse's mentor, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," replied Thalia, recognising the young woman as one of the three whose job it was to inform the mentors of any requests to send gifts to the arena. Each tribute's mentor had the final say in whether or not a gift was sent, though they could not refuse without a good reason and nor could they prevent the other mentors from sending gifts to their tributes.

"Good, because I need your approval for this." The young woman handed Thalia a small package which, on close inspection, proved to contain six wound dressings. "They're impregnated with an antibiotic," she explained. "Anyway, I just need your permission to send them in."

Thalia nodded; the gift of a pack of dressings had come at just the right moment, though she couldn't help wondering how much it had cost. Probably what several packs would have cost nearly two weeks ago. Even so, this was what Ruth needed to heal her leg and she, Thalia, had no reason to veto this gift. "Of course," she said. And, within moments, the pack of dressings was attached to a silver parachute, ready to be sent to Ruth in the arena.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

For the tenth time since the Games began, the anthem started to play and the Capitol seal appeared in the sky above the arena, marking the end of another day. Max's picture followed, but Ruth could hardly bring herself to look at it, unable to stop thinking of the horrific way in which he had died. The image of his headless body seemed to have lodged itself in her mind and the fact that Max had been the youngest of this year's tributes made it seem even worse. The District 2 boy from two years ago who had raped three other male tributes before killing them was one thing; he had been one of the most sadistic tributes ever to enter a Hunger Games arena and the overwhelming verdict when he was beheaded had been "good riddance". But Max had not deserved this; like so many other youngsters, he had paid the ultimate price for the supposed crimes of his ancestors.

Ruth could think of several things she would like to say about Panem's rulers and their cruel Games, but she resisted the urge. There was no telling if she and Lukas were being filmed at this very moment and, if she said anything that could be interpreted as seditious, it could have repercussions for herself and her family. Inciting a rebellion was a serious crime, one which could get you turned into an Avox or even executed. Of course, Ruth was currently in a situation where there was a strong possibility that she might die soon anyway, but there was always the risk that the Capitol might decide to make an example out of the entire Waterhouse family and she didn't want that.

"So we're down to the last seven," was all she said, not allowing herself to think about what this meant for herself and Lukas. It had been a long time since both tributes from District 9 had made it this far; the last Games in which that had happened had been the ones which had taken place the year Katie was born. Those had been the Twenty-fifth Games, the first Quarter Quell, in which each district had been forced to elect their own tributes. When the Hunger Games were devised, it had been decreed that, once every twenty-five years, a twist would be added as a reminder of the lives lost in the rebellion and of the Capitol's power. Forcing the districts to vote for the youngsters who would be sent to the arena had been intended to remind the people that the Hunger Games existed because they had chosen to initiate violence.

Ruth, of course, was too young to remember all this, but Demmie had once told her that, in the months leading up to that year's reaping, the entire adult population of District 9 had been made to report to the Justice Building each evening and cast their votes; no-one was permitted to abstain. The youngsters were divided according to age, with twelve-year-olds being voted for on one evening, thirteen-year-olds on the next . . . and so on. Round by round, those who received the fewest votes were eliminated until a shortlist of fourteen (one boy and one girl for each age at which youngsters were eligible for the reaping) was left. The final vote had taken place on the evening before the reaping and the names of the boy and girl who received the most votes were announced the next day, at the point where the names would normally have been drawn from the reaping balls. Only youngsters whose names had been on the shortlist were permitted to volunteer, but, as was all too often the case in the non-Career districts, nobody stepped forward. Demmie had said those Games were particularly difficult to watch.

Thinking of this reminded Ruth that the next Quarter Quell was only six years away. She wondered what cruel reminder of the lives lost in the rebellion the Capitol would introduce this time, but then reminded herself that she would find out in six years' time - if she got out of this arena alive, which still seemed unlikely. Especially if her leg was left untreated for much longer . . .

* * *

It was at that moment that the parachute appeared, floating slowly downwards and landing just beyond the stand of trees which had provided Ruth and Lukas with shelter since the mutt attack. It was risky to stay here too long - and the chances were the Gamemakers wouldn't let them anyway - but, since Ruth could hardly walk on her injured leg, they'd had no choice. But, maybe, that parachute contained something which could help treat the leg. At the very least, whatever it was must be meant for one of them; if it was for one of the other tributes, it would have landed near the relevant campsite.

"Go see what that is," Ruth told Lukas. She rolled up her trouser leg and examined the injury, which was beginning to look red and inflamed, not to mention being decidedly painful. The lizard's teeth had been sharp; the tears in the fabric, darkened with bloodstains, reminded her of the moment when it had sunk them into her flesh. And that was nothing compared to what Till had gone through. Ruth quickly dismissed thoughts of her late ally and watched as Lukas crept cautiously out of the trees.

Moments later, he returned, carrying the parachute and the gift attached to it. Examining the package, he and Ruth soon found that it contained a pack of dressings, impregnated with antibiotics, just the thing for treating a leg wound which was beginning to show signs of infection. It must have been expensive; medical supplies always were, even at the start of the Games. Now, nearly two weeks in, this one packet must have cost a fortune and Ruth couldn't help wondering how many people had contributed towards whatever exorbitant amount of money had been needed to buy it. In any case, it had solved the problem of treating her leg.

Remembering the basic first aid training he and Ruth had received at the Training Centre, Lukas cleaned the wound as best he could, using water from his flask. Because neither tribute had anything that could be used as a towel, they had to wait for it to dry before applying one of the dressings, which gave them both time to think about everything that had happened since the reaping. Seventeen tributes were already dead; ten had lost their lives in the bloodbath and a further seven had fallen since. That meant six more would die before these Games were over, as Ruth and Lukas constantly reminded themselves. No matter how much they wanted to see their families again, only one of them could do so. And, with four Career tributes still alive, the odds were still against even that.

* * *

"You got anything to eat?" Ruth asked, once the dressing had been applied to her leg.

In response, Lukas opened up his backpack and showed her the handful of berries and roots it contained. With Ruth injured, he had not dared to forage too far from camp, just in case the Careers decided to show up. Xanadu was currently out of action with an arm injury, but Jet, Gaius and Marina still posed a threat and none of them would be able to pass up the chance to take Ruth out should they find her alone and wounded. Indeed, Ruth and Lukas had only escaped Jet and Gaius's attention earlier because the two Careers were preoccupied with catching and killing Max. And they had not set any snares since before the incident with the lizard mutts, which meant the last bit of meat either of them had eaten was the gopher from Lukas's pack. Lukas frowned as he thought of the stash of supplies back at the Careers' camp. During a previous Hunger Games, the girls from Districts 2 and 4 and the boy from 1 had been shown frying large quantities of sausages which they had found among the supplies at the Cornucopia. Meanwhile, the rest of the tributes had to struggle to find anything edible.

"When I think of that lot stuffing themselves . . ." he muttered, dividing the roots and berries into two piles, one for tonight and one for tomorrow morning. There was no getting away from it; he and Ruth would have to find more food, or neither of them would last much longer. Not only that, their flasks needed refilling as well. The Careers had all the food and water they wanted, while everyone else faced starvation unless they knew how to forage for food or had good sponsors who were willing to stump up the price of a few crackers or some dried meat. It was like that throughout Panem, he realised; the Capitol was a place of excess, whereas those living in the poorer districts had next to nothing. The injustice rankled for many people, made worse by the fact that the only hope they had of escaping the cycle of poverty and starvation was for one of their children to win the Hunger Games.

Ruth sensed that Lukas was straying into dangerous territory and quickly tried to divert him from thoughts of the Careers and their stash of supplies. But she too was currently preoccupied with thoughts of food, of the delicacies she and Lukas had eaten in the Capitol and of the simpler fare back home in District 9. "You know what I miss?" she asked at length.

"What?"

"Bread." It was true, Ruth realised; neither she nor Lukas had seen bread since they arrived in the arena. The Careers had probably found a few loaves among the supplies, but any that had not been eaten would be getting stale by now. Besides, Ruth and Lukas were not about to risk robbing the Careers, not after what had happened to Max. "Have you ever eaten a freshly baked loaf?"

Lukas nodded. "We had one as a reaping day treat," he replied. Traditionally, gifts of food were exchanged on reaping day, which was supposed to be treated as a festivity, though, needless to say, no-one enjoyed it. However much the Capitol tried to dress it up by hanging fancy banners in each district's main square, by requiring everyone to wear their best clothes, nothing could disguise the day's grim purpose. "But mostly we can't afford it," Lukas added. It had taken his mother weeks of scrimping and saving to pay for a fresh loaf from District 9's baker. "So our bread's usually a few days old - unless we use the tesserae grain and make our own."

"I was forgetting." Ruth looked down at her hands. "Your family aren't as well off as mine." The poorer residents of each district often harboured an underlying resentment toward their wealthier neighbours, those who could generally count on getting a good meal, those whose children never had to take tesserae. Since so many youngsters from poorer families had extra entries, the odds of their names being drawn from the reaping ball were significantly higher, though anyone who was eligible for the reaping was at risk. As Ruth had found out when Septima drew her name . . . In fact, out of all the tributes who had represented District 9 over the years, only six had not been claiming tesserae, including Ruth.

"It doesn't matter," Lukas told her. He did not add that it was unlikely either of them would see so much as a stale crust again. They ate a handful of berries each, then settled in for another night in the arena. Another night in a place where death could come at any moment, where your only hope of getting out alive was to outlive all your opponents . . .

* * *

The first thing Ruth noticed when she woke up the next day was how hot it was. Until now, the climate had been fairly pleasant, but she knew the Gamemakers were capable of manipulating the weather in the arena, usually to make things uncomfortable for the tributes. For the Thirty-eighth Games, they had even divided the arena into five zones, each with a different type of weather phenomenon. One zone had been buffeted by gale-force winds, another inundated by torrential rain, a third featured blinding snowstorms, while, in yet another, fog descended at random to disorientate any tributes who found themselves there. Finally, there was a zone where the temperature was scorching hot, much like today.

"What are they trying to do?" Lukas wondered out loud, squinting at the sun through the trees. "Bake us?" Even in the shade, it was hot, though not as hot as it would be out in the open. And he had a feeling it would get even hotter before the day was out.

Ruth shrugged. "Don't know. But you can bet they're up to something." Whatever it was, she reflected, it probably had something to do with forcing the remaining tributes together, though she could not see how ratcheting the temperature up several degrees would achieve that. If anything, it would encourage the tributes to stay in the shade, thereby making conflict less likely. But maybe this was only part of the Gamemakers' plan. "One good thing," she added. "At least it's hot for the Careers too."

Another good thing as far as Ruth was concerned was that her leg seemed to be healing. It was no longer throbbing and she had a feeling she could probably walk on it if she tried, but she decided to wait one more day as a precaution. Whatever was in those dressings she had been sent must be good; when she went to change the dressing for a fresh one, she found that the swelling was definitely down. Gingerly, she stood up, wobbling slightly at first, but finding that she was able to bear weight on her leg once more.

Lukas watched with mixed feelings. Under different circumstances, he might have been glad to see that Ruth was on the mend, but these were the Hunger Games. At least one of them must join Freda, Max, Till and all the other dead tributes on the list of those who had fallen. When he and Ruth had made their alliance, neither of them had expected to last more than a few days, yet here they were, eleven days in and both of them were still alive. And, with only seven tributes left out of the original twenty-four, perhaps the time had come for them to break it off and go their separate ways.

"Ruth, I . . ." Lukas began, hesitating as he had done when he first proposed the alliance. They had been through a lot together, had rarely been apart since the reaping, and had grown used to each other's company. But they had known from the start that their alliance could never last, that it was only a question of time before something happened to bring it to an end. Whether death or a mutual decision to split up ended the alliance made no difference; the fact remained that only one of them could survive. It was something which all tributes who formed an alliance had to face sooner or later.

But Ruth interupted him. "Something's caught in that branch," she said, pointing to a nearby tree, where she could see a glint of silver.

Lukas, forgetting that he had been about to break off their alliance, walked over to the tree for a closer look. A parachute of the sort which delivered gifts to the arena was caught in one of the branches, just out of his reach. "Pass me your sword," he said to Ruth. She did so and he used the blade to knock the parachute and the gift attached to it out of the branch. The gift turned out to be a loaf of bread baked in the manner characteristic of District 9, the dough shaped to suggest an ear of wheat. Each district had its own way of baking bread, a way which reflected the dominent industry in that district; for example, District 4 produced a distinctive fish-shaped loaf. Ruth and Lukas examined the bread for several minutes, but could find nothing to indicate whether Ethan or Thalia had sent it.

In the end, unable to decide which of them had been meant to receive the loaf, Ruth and Lukas decided to tear it in two so that each of them took half. Such sharing of gifts, even among tributes from the same district, was unusual, especially at this late stage in the Games. Most tributes who found themselves in the same position as Ruth and Lukas would have fought to the death for the right to claim the gift, even if they had previously been allies. But, though Lukas had been on the verge of ending his alliance with Ruth, he did not want to fight her, at least not yet.

"What were you about to say?" Ruth asked, stashing her half-loaf in her pack.

"Oh . . . nothing," Lukas replied, realising he was not quite ready to break off their alliance. He knew he and Ruth would, at most, have only a few more days together, that it would be better to call time on their alliance, just in case they were the last two tributes left standing. But the time wasn't quite right - yet.

* * *

Since it was so unbearably hot, Ruth and Lukas decided to spend the day in the shade of the trees and go foraging in the late afternoon. By then, the temperature should have dropped to bearable levels, but they would still have light to see by. The loss of Till had also meant the loss of the night-vision glasses and neither of them wanted to be caught out in the open after dark with no means of seeing where they were going. So they reminded themselves to keep an eye on the sky while they were foraging and, if the sun looked like it was about to set, they would make camp wherever they happened to be at the time.

That afternoon, they left the shade of the trees which had been their shelter for the past three days and set off to look for food. Ruth was still limping slightly, but her leg seemed to be healing well and she was grateful to whoever had raised the money to pay for the pack of dressings. They refilled their flasks at a pond which Lukas had found, treated the water with iodine, then foraged for edible plants, taking care to pick only those with which they were already familiar and which they knew to be safe. Even so, by the time failing light forced them to stop and make camp, Ruth's basket was fairly full.

For supper, they tore off pieces from the bread which had arrived in the arena earlier and ate it along with a handful of berries each. While they ate, the anthem began to play and the seal appeared in the sky, but there were no faces tonight. However, they knew that couldn't last, that the Gamemakers were sure to take steps to force the remaining tributes together and, when that happened, deaths were inevitable. Whether it was a "natural" disaster or one of the Gamemakers' so-called feasts that drew the youngsters together made little difference; the end result was the same. More dead kids, more faces in the sky . . .

The next two days in the arena were just as hot, forcing Ruth and Lukas to stay undercover as much as possible while the sun was out, only leaving whatever shelter they had found just before sunset to avoid the worst of the heat. During this time, they foraged for food, keeping a careful eye out for the Careers, who might see the coolness of the late afternoon as an ideal opportunity to go hunting. But, if they did, neither Ruth nor Lukas ever ran into them. It was a respite of sorts, but they both knew the Gamemakers could bring it to an end at any moment. Everything in the arena was becoming parched; the pond which Ruth and Lukas been using for drinking water was soon completely dry, forcing them to ration their water. And Ethan's warning about the dangers of dehydration seemed to have etched itself on their minds.

"Do they want us all to die of thirst?" Ruth asked, after a fruitless search for an alternative source of water. She and Lukas had found a narrow track which used to be the stream they and Till had followed earlier in the Games, but there was no water to be had anywhere in the arena. Except among the Careers' stash, but that was being guarded more carefully than ever since Max had been caught stealing from it, even though there were only three non-Careers left in the arena.

"Doubt it," said Lukas. "That's not what our friends in the Capitol want." One or two deaths from dehydration would be one thing, but, as the Games neared their climax, the audience expected to see a bit of action. And action had been decidedly lacking recently; Max had been killed three days ago and no tributes had died since. The Gamemakers must be planning something to ensure those watching the Games on television got to see a show and not just a bunch of kids dying off one by one until a single victor remained. Ruth and Lukas couldn't be sure, but they had a feeling the current drought had something to do with it; everything had dried up too quickly for it to be natural.

* * *

In the early hours of the fourteenth day since the twenty-four youngsters arrived in the arena, someone in a control room pressed a button and triggered the event which would force the few who were still alive into one area. The Forty-fourth Hunger Games were nearing their climax.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

When Ruth first woke up, she though the red glow on the horizon was caused by the rising sun. But something didn't seem right and, as she looked closer, she began to realise what that something was. For one thing, it was coming from completely the wrong direction; even in the arena, the sun always rose in the east and set in the west - and this glow was coming from somewhere to the north. Not only that, but the distinctive smell of smoke was drifting on the pervading wind. She needed no-one to tell her what was happening, that the grassland which made up most of this year's arena was on fire. And she was certain that it was no coincidence that the Gamemakers had caused everything to dry up over the last few days.

"Lukas!" she yelled, reaching over and shaking him. "Wake up! The arena's on fire!"

"Huh?" Lukas opened his eyes and looked in the direction she was pointing. Sure enough, flames were devouring everything in sight, spreading inexorably towards the spot where he and Ruth had spent the night. And they seemed to be spreading unusually fast, even given the dry conditions, too fast for this fire to be natural. The Gamemakers must be behind this; they must have started this fire in order to flush the tributes out. As far as the viewers in the Capitol were concerned, things had been too quiet lately; there had been no deaths since the tenth day, not even any major fights. So the Gamemakers had taken steps to drive the tributes together and force them into a confrontation.

"Come on!" Ruth shouted, grabbing her sword and backpack. "We've got to get out of here!" She knew they would more than likely be running right into the hands of the Careers, but if it was a choice between that and burning to death . . . At least she and Lukas could fight the Careers, even if the odds were against them.

Following Ruth's lead, Lukas grabbed his backpack and knife, preparing to make a run for it. But the fire was spreading so fast that it was already only a few metres from the spot where he and Ruth had camped - and it was getting nearer all the time. Not only that, but other fires were encroaching from other directions, joining together to form one superinferno. The air was thick with acrid smoke, making it almost impossible to breathe, blotting out the sun as it rose over the arena. Ruth and Lukas had no time to lose; unless they wanted the next two cannon shots to be for them, they would have to get away. But how? They were surrounded by fire on all sides.

No, they weren't; Ruth could just see a gap in the flames. Coughing, she pointed it out to Lukas, though she could just as easily have run off in that direction and left him to his fate. These were the Hunger Games, after all, and they both knew only one of them could survive. But, rather than save herself at the expense of her district partner, Ruth had chosen to show him a way to escape. She did not stop to consider why she had done so when many tributes at this stage in the Games would have fled and left their partner to the flames, but she knew part of it was the memory of how she and Lukas had fled from the lizard mutts and left Till to die. She did not want Lukas to die as well, at least not yet, but she knew it was only a question of time.

* * *

The Careers, meanwhile, had also been woken by the fire and were attempting to flee to whatever passed for safety in the arena. They had managed to grab their weapons and backpacks, but everything else at their camp - the tents, the stash of food and other supplies, the traps they had rigged to deter the other tributes - had been left to the flames. Already they had reached the stage where their alliance was beginning to break down, not that there had ever been any real friendship between them to begin with. They had banded together to hunt down and kill the tributes from the other nine districts and, now that only three were left, the Career pack had pretty much served its purpose. Only the mutual need to get clear of the flames kept them together.

"Which way now?" asked Xanadu, coughing on the smoke. Flames surrounded them on three sides, with only a narrow path to lead the four of them clear of the inferno engulfing the arena. So far, the flames had not blocked them off completely, which suggested that the Gamemakers had deliberately left a gap, knowing the tributes would try to use it as an escape route. The trouble was, with the smoke getting in their eyes, it was becoming increasingly difficult to see the gap. The fire was driving them ever onwards, its heat and ferocity increasing with every passing second.

"Straight on," said Marina, her voice muffled by a towel she had taken from her backpack and used to cover her mouth and nose in an attempt to avoid inhaling any smoke. There was little doubt in her mind that this fire was designed to drive the tributes together and that made her almost glad. With all the tributes in one area, it would be easier to hunt down and kill the remaining non-Careers, after which she and the other Careers would fight each other until one of them emerged as victor. At least that was the plan.

But, even for Career tributes, plans can sometimes go awry. As they staggered through the burning arena, the thick smoke proved too much for Jet, who fell to his knees, unable to go on. He may have been one of the best fighters in the arena - not to mention being the oldest tribute since Juno's death during the lizard mutt attack - but he had reached the point where he could not continue, not even by crawling on his hands and knees. His lungs felt as though they were about to burst, his head was throbbing and he felt physically sick. He could see his three fellow Careers a few metres ahead, still trying to get clear, but his throat felt too raw to call out to them, not that they would have gone back for him even if he could have attracted their attention. They were so preoccupied with saving themselves that they hadn't even noticed he was not with them.

Knowing there was no hope of escape, Jet reached into his trouser pocket and took out the token he had brought with him from District 1. It was a gold ring, set with the gemstones after which he, his brother and his three sisters had been named. Jet ran through their names in his mind. Ruby was the oldest at twenty-three, followed by himself, then Agate and Amethyst (his fourteen-year-old twin sisters) and finally his eleven-year-old brother, Opal. Slipping the ring onto his finger, he imagined them watching on television back in District 1 and braced himself for the moment the flames reached his body, telling himself that, no matter how much it hurt, he was not going to cry out. He was going to die bravely, as a Career tribute should. Even so, he closed his eyes to avoid having to watch his own body catch fire; he could already feel that the flames were near - very near.

And, then, his trousers began burning, along with the flesh underneath. Despite his vow not to cry out, the pain was so agonising that he could not help himself; fortunately, the fire was so intense that he was soon beyond screaming. And, a short time after that, the cannon marking his death boomed out across the burning arena.

* * *

While trying to escape the flames, Ruth and Lukas had become separated. Consequently, when she heard the cannon go off, Ruth feared it might be for Lukas, that she was now alone in the arena. But she forced herself to keep going, knowing that _her_ cannon would follow unless she could get away from the flames. So, on the verge of exhaustion, her lungs struggling for breath, her eyes smarting from the smoke, she ploughed on, heading in the direction the Gamemakers wanted her to head. No doubt the other tributes who were still alive were being driven in the same direction, to a spot where they were guaranteed to meet up and fight. If any of them were in any condition to fight . . .

Suddenly, Ruth spotted something up ahead: the Cornucopia and the range of mountains behind it. She had not been back here since the opening day, when the first ten deaths of the Forty-fourth Hunger Games had occurred; none of the tributes had. But the Cornucopia was the traditional location for "feasts", so, had the Gamemakers not chosen to use fire to force the remaining tributes together, she and the others would almost certainly have ended up back here anyway. "Feasts" could be announced at any moment once there were seven or fewer tributes left in the arena, in the hope that the youngsters would be desperate enough to risk their lives for a bit of extra food, though they were not held every year. Some years, such as now, the Gamemakers caused a "natural" disaster to draw the tributes together.

Ruth could see no sign of her fellow tributes, but she had heard no more cannons which meant five out of the six were still alive and heading this way. Knowing there were at least three Careers among them, she decided it would be a good idea to get out of here, rather than wait around for them to catch up. She had her sword, but that would do her little good if all the Careers attacked her at once. Besides, she needed to find shelter.

But where? The whole arena, apart from the area surrounding the Cornucopia and the mountains beyond, was ablaze. Indeed, she noted, the Gamemakers seemed to have taken steps to make sure the fire would not spread to the Cornucopia, which meant they wanted the tributes in this area. She knew they were more than capable of keeping the fire going until it had killed all but one of the tributes, then extinguishing it and whisking that one tribute away from the arena to be crowned victor. But that would cheat the audience in the Capitol of the chance to see the tributes fight each other to the death. The sole purpose of Gamemaker-engineered disasters was to drive the tributes together; any deaths which occurred as a direct result of such events were simply collateral.

As she looked at the mountains, a thought occurred to Ruth. There might be a cave somewhere in those peaks, a cave where she could shelter. Of course, there was always the risk that any cave she found might contain some unpleasant surprise, such as mutts, or landmines placed at the entrance to blow up anyone who tried to enter that cave. Indeed, the mountainous arena in Thalia's Games had included a vast network of caves, many of which contained deadly traps; of the fifteen tributes who survived that year's bloodbath, six had been killed by cave traps. But Ruth had no time to worry about booby-trapped caves right now; her main concern was finding shelter.

She staggered in the direction of the mountains, painfully aware of how exhausted she was, of the smoke she had inhaled while fleeing the flames. Twice she had to stop to throw up which, in addition to potentially dehydrating her, added to the unpleasant tastes in her mouth. And she knew she must smell dreadful, of smoke and vomit mixed with the odours of someone who had not washed properly for two weeks. Not that personal hygiene was a priority in the arena, though she couldn't help thinking longingly of the Capitol showers and their various settings, many of which included richly scented foams. But she quickly dismissed such thoughts and forced herself to concentrate on looking for a cave. Her fellow tributes could be here at any moment and she did not want to wait around for them, not even for Lukas. She still didn't know which tribute had died; that would be revealed at the death recap. But, now that there were only six left in the arena, she decided that, if Lukas was still alive, it would be better if she avoided him from now on.

The alliance between the two tributes from District 9 was over.

* * *

After some searching, Ruth found a narrow opening in the rocks. Peering in, she could just make out a small cave that looked as though it might provide some shelter, though the entrance would be her only source of light. Flashlights, powered by batteries that recharged as you walked, had been available at the Cornucopia, but she had not been able to get her hands on one. As for lighting a fire, she did not have the energy to look for fuel - besides, she had seen enough fire for one day. All she could do was squeeze herself through the opening - not an easy task when she was wearing her backpack - and enter the cave.

She allowed herself a moment for her eyes to get used to the dim light, then sat down and took off her backpack. Taking out her flask, she allowed herself a mouthful of her rapidly depleting water to wash away the bad tastes in her mouth. Tomorrow, she would have to keep an eye out for a stream somewhere in the mountains, though she wouldn't put it past the Gamemakers to have left only one source of water in the whole arena. That way, all the tributes would have to use it and, especially at this late stage, fights would be guaranteed. For now, though, she was so exhausted that she just wanted to lie down and go to sleep.

The next thing she remembered was waking up and, by the light of a campfire which had been lit in the cave, seeing a fair-haired girl peering down at her. At first, she thought the girl was Xanadu and was just wondering if she could reach her sword when she realised something wasn't quite right; this girl was too small for Xanadu. That meant she could only be the thirteen-year-old tribute from District 6, whose name escaped Ruth for the moment. It was something beginning with S, but what? Stella? Samantha? Sarah? Yes, that was it. Ruth remembered Sarah at her pre-Games interview, saying her strategy was going to be to avoid the other tributes. But Ruth had not expected her to last this long, partly because she was so young, partly because tributes who attempted to adopt a hiding strategy often ended up dying from starvation unless they had good sponsors or knew something about wilderness survival.

However, Ruth had no way of knowing what Sarah's situation was with regards to sponsors and, as for wilderness survival, District 6 was one of the more urban districts. Ruth knew little about it other than what she had seen on television, but it was enough to tell her that, if a tribute from 6 was to stand any chance in the Hunger Games, they had better pay attention during training, particularly when it came to learning how to find food. But, before Ruth could ask Sarah any questions, she heard the anthem beginning to play, meaning the Capitol seal had appeared in the sky to mark the end of another day.

Still feeling somewhat groggy, she sat up and peered through the entrance, expecting to see the face of the tribute who had died while she was fleeing the fire. But there was nothing, just the seal hovering over the arena, then fading away. That meant she must have slept for more than a day, since she clearly remembered hearing the cannon. "How long have I . . .?"

"I came in yesterday and found you unconscious," replied Sarah, cutting Ruth off in mid-sentence. "I knew I ought to kill you, but I didn't - I've been alone here since Max died."

"So you wanted someone to talk to?" asked Ruth, resisting the urge to enlist Sarah as a new ally. It was too late in the Games to be thinking about alliances. But there were plenty of questions she wanted to ask the younger girl.

* * *

Bit by bit, Ruth coaxed Sarah's story out of her. It turned out that, like Ruth, Lukas and Till, Sarah and Max had formed an alliance while they were at the Training Centre. At the Cornucopia, they had fled at the first sound of the gong, seeking refuge in the mountains while everyone else (excluding the ten who died in the bloodbath) dispersed into the grassland. "Neither of us knew what we were going to do for food," she explained. "But then Max had an idea to steal from the Careers. He's very clever . . ." She trailed off, as she realised she was talking about her dead partner in the present tense. "Well, he was. He knew how to avoid traps and he thought, if he could sneak stuff from the Careers' stash, one of us might have a chance. He said he didn't think it was fair that the Careers always got all the good stuff."

Ruth had to agree with Sarah on that point, but she did not say so. Instead, she nodded to the District 6 girl, telling her to continue.

"We did all right for a while. But, then, Max didn't come back one day. I'd heard the cannon go off, but I hoped it was for someone else, until I saw him in the sky that night . . ." Tears welled up in Sarah's eyes as she recalled the awful feeling of desolation as she learned that her district partner and ally was dead. There was nothing Ruth could say or do to comfort her; the sad fact was that only one tribute could get out of the arena alive. And the odds have never been in Sarah's favour, especially now that the rest of the surviving tributes had all been driven into the same area.

"Sarah," Ruth said, trying to avoid thinking of the fact that the girl she was talking to was living on borrowed time, "did you see the death recap last night?" She had to know who had died; she had not missed a death recap - at least not one where there had been any faces in the sky - until last night.

Sarah nodded slowly. "The boy from District 1 died yesterday," she confirmed. "That means there's six of us left." She did not know that Jet had been the tribute who killed Max, and Ruth decided it would be best if she wasn't told, especially considering the nature of Max's death. Sarah was only thirteen, after all.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

Until now, Ruth had had no way of knowing where Sarah was or how she had managed to stay alive for so long. When she had watched the District 6 reaping and seen that their tributes for this year were just twelve and thirteen years old, Ruth had expected both of them to be dead within a week of arriving in the arena. That was what had happened to most of the youngsters who had been reaped before they were fourteen, including her Aunt Blossom. But, thanks to Max's daring plan to steal from the Careers' stash, he and Sarah had managed to survive against the odds. Max had eventually been caught and killed, but Sarah was still alive, the youngest tribute to reach the final six in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games.

Only once before had such a young tribute made it this far. At the Fourteenth Games - the Games which Xanadu's father, Brilliant, had won - the female tribute from District 3 had been a twelve-year-old called Pixel. The arena that year was an old industrial complex, which gave the tributes from the more urban districts an advantage they did not have in the rural landscapes more commonly used as arenas, though this also meant the youngsters were entirely dependent on the Cornucopia and their sponsors for food. Pixel had demonstrated a talent for making improvised explosives, allowing her to attack her fellow tributes from a distance and ultimately earning herself a place in the final three, along with Brilliant and a girl from District 5 called Electra. However, it was at that point that a collapsing building took her out, leaving Brilliant and Electra to fight for the crown.

Unlike Pixel, however, Sarah had no weapons, improvised or otherwise, and had only lasted this long by avoiding the other tributes. Now that all the tributes had been driven together, the odds were that she would not survive much longer. Sooner or later, one of the three remaining Careers was certain to find her and kill her, as her district partner had already been killed. And Ruth did not want to have to witness that when she knew how Demmie felt about twelve- and thirteen-year-olds going into the arena.

Sitting in the cave and trying to avoid looking at Sarah, Ruth remembered a winter's day just over ten years before. It was one of the earliest memories she had.

* * *

_New Year's Day was approaching and, like all the children in District 9, Katie and Ruth were eagerly awaiting the annual festivities. It was one of the few things the people of Panem genuinely celebrated, rather than being forced to celebrate as on reaping day. For many people, it marked the fact that they had made it through another year, a fact celebrated with the exchange of gifts, traditionally in the form of food, though children who were below reaping age might be given a new toy if their parents could afford it. Most, however, were lucky if they had any toys at all._

_On this particular day, Katie and Ruth had decided to sneak a look inside Demmie's wardrobe in the hope of finding out what gifts they would be receiving. In the process, Katie discovered a cardboard box and took it out, thinking it might contain one of this year's gifts. But, when she opened it, all she found was a length of pink ribbon. Her face fell when she saw it. "Is this all?" she demanded. New Year's Day was also her birthday - this year, it would be her ninth - so Demmie and Neil always tried to make it extra special for her. She had not expected to be fobbed off with a piece of ribbon, especially when Demmie knew she hated ribbons anyway._

_And it was at that moment that Demmie chose to come in. She frowned when she saw her daughters going through her wardrobe and prepared to give them both the scolding of their lives, but, when she saw the ribbon in Katie's hand, she did something neither girl had seen her do before. She broke down in tears._

_"Mommy?" Ruth ventured, moving closer to Demmie. She was still only four years old and the sight of a grown-up crying unnerved her. "Mommy, what's wrong?"_

_Demmie hurriedly composed herself and sat down on the edge of her bed, lifting Ruth onto her lap. Katie sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at her mother and sister, the pink ribbon still clutched in her hand. "I'm sorry," Demmie said, her voice cracking slightly. "I guess I should explain - you're going to find out eventually anyway. You see, that ribbon belonged to your aunt . . ."_

_"But we don't have an aunt," objected Katie. Both Demmie and Neil were only children, which meant Katie and Ruth had no aunts, or uncles, or cousins. They did have a Great Aunt Hestia on their father's side, but there was no-one who was just an aunt._

_"No, you don't now. But, when I was your age, I had a little sister called Blossom." And, with that, Demmie began to explain about Blossom, whom she had never mentioned to either of her daughters before, telling them about the things Blossom had done as a child. She spoke of holding her new baby sister in her arms (under the careful supervision of their mother) of promising that she would always look after the child, of the terrible day, thirteen years later, when Blossom was taken away._

_"What happened to her?" asked Katie._

_"They took her as a tribute in the Games," replied Demmie, a look of pain momentarily crossing her face. It was a pain she had tried to conceal for the past ten years. "You know how two kids get taken away every year?" Katie and Ruth nodded slowly; like everyone else in the districts, they were aware that the Games existed and that everyone had to watch them on television. They also knew that most of the youngsters who were chosen for the Games never came back, or rather they came back in wooden boxes. "Well, that's what happened to your Aunt Blossom," Demmie went on. "They took her away and I had to watch her die." Looking at Katie, it suddenly struck her that, in a few years' time, she would once again have to face the prospect of watching a close relative line up for the reaping; the thought made her wince as though in physical pain, but she quickly composed herself. "I think you should put that ribbon back where you got it from. And I don't want either of you touching it again. Promise?"_

_Katie and Ruth could tell this was very important to their mother, so they both made the promise._

* * *

Now, more than a decade later, Ruth was sitting in a cave with another thirteen-year-old who had been forced into the Hunger Games. She wished there was some way she could save Sarah, but she knew there was nothing she, or anyone else, could do; even if the two of them could somehow escape from the arena, they were certain to be arrested for defying the Capitol. And there was no telling what the Capitol would do to them then, though it was bound to involve using them as an example to other youngsters who might be tempted to try something similar instead of playing the Games according to the Capitol's rules. They might even end up as Avoxes employed to look after the tributes in the Training Centre, a fate Ruth felt was worse than death.

And death was what awaited all the youngsters in the arena, all of them but one. Whether they died in combat or through some other means made little difference; most of them would not get out of here alive. That was why Ruth had decided not to go looking for Lukas; she knew the Games had reached the stage where any tributes with at least one surviving ally faced the possibility that it might come down to the two of them. In the early stages, when the odds were still against both of them making it this far, she and Lukas had tried not to think about this scenario. But, now that there were just six tributes left, it was better if she thought of the others as enemies, all five of them.

Even so, she knew she would never be able to kill Sarah. And that meant there was only one thing she could do: put as much distance as possible between herself and the District 6 girl. With that in mind, she waited until Sarah had fallen asleep, then slipped out of the cave and began walking. She did not look back.

* * *

Ruth ended up spending an uncomfortable night on the slopes of the mountain, pulling her jacket tightly around herself in an attempt to keep warm. There was no sleeping bag in her pack and, with the rest of the tributes so close, she dared not risk lighting a fire. If she did, Xanadu, Gaius and Marina were bound to descend on her, either individually or in a group. And, while she could probably take on either of the two female Careers, she knew she wouldn't have a chance if all three Careers attacked her at once. And then there was Gaius, who had to be the strongest of all the youngsters who had become tributes in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games. If it came down to the two of them, it was a pretty safe bet that the crown would be going to District 2 this year.

"Just have to hope he gets killed before that," she thought out loud. But she knew that, out of the three remaining non-Careers, only Lukas stood any real chance of taking Gaius down. And Gaius was not going to be an easy opponent, she realised, remembering what he had done to the dummies in the Training Centre. During a spear-throwing session, he had thrown one spear with such force that it penetrated clean through the dummy he had targeted; Ruth shuddered at the thought of such a thing happening to a human being.

No, she would have to stop thinking of her opponents as human. They were her enemies who were out to kill her, unless she could kill them first. She had already been directly responsible for the death of one of her fellow tributes and, if she wanted to get out of here alive, she would have to face the fact that she must kill at least once more. But not Sarah, she vowed - she would never be able to kill a thirteen-year-old. That was why she had decided to go it alone from now on; at least then she would only have to worry about keeping herself alive and not anyone else. But for how much longer? Eighteen tributes were dead already and there was no telling which of the remaining six would be next.

But, if it had to be her, she vowed that she would give her killer a taste of her sword; she would not go down without a fight. Of course, there was still the possibility that she might fall victim to a Gamemakers' trap, or be set upon by mutts for the second time in these Games. There was no telling what the Gamemakers might do to give the people in the Capitol a little added "entertainment". The fire which had killed Jet had been a means to an end only, a way of driving the tributes together; with most of the arena destroyed, they would have to confine themselves to one small area if they were to stand even a slim chance of surviving.

Ruth gripped her sword in her hand and, though she could not be sure if she was being filmed right now, tried to look as though she stood a fighting chance.

* * *

Ruth woke to an agonised cry and, before she realised what she was doing, before she remembered that she was no longer part of any alliances, she was on her feet and running towards the sound.

Presently, she drew to a halt beside a stream, where she found Marina pulling her trident out of someone lying on the ground, though she could not see who it was. But, since the cannon had not sounded, she knew Marina's victim was still alive. Which would shortly be more than could be said for Marina, she vowed, deciding that the time had come to take the District 4 girl out. She might never have a better opportunity; Marina was alone and there was nowhere nearby for Xanadu and Gaius to lay an ambush. Ruth stepped forward, her sword drawn.

And it was then that she saw who had ended up on the wrong end of Marina's trident. Sarah lay on the ground, bleeding from three parallel wounds in her abdomen, alive but not for long. In a few minutes, she would be dead, another innocent young life lost to these cruel Games. Ruth felt an overwhelming rage well up inside her, a rage which meant the only thing on her mind was to kill. As had happened when she killed Shaun during the first week, she completely forgot that Marina was a fellow human being; all she saw was an enemy who had to be destroyed. She charged, yelling at the top of her voice, her sword raised above her head.

Marina was caught completely off-guard by both the sudden ferocity of Ruth's attack and by the fact that a tribute from District 9 had dared to attack her, a Career, at all. Like most Career tributes, she thought she was a cut above those who did not come from Districts 1, 2 or 4, who had not trained all their lives to compete in the Games. True there were now three Careers, including her own district partner, on the list of the dead, but that still left three more, one of whom would surely take the crown. Suddenly, she felt the cold steel blade of Ruth's sword slice through the material in her sleeve, cutting into her flesh.

She was wounded, but not incapacitated; Ruth had cut her right arm, but she, Marina, was left-handed. And it was in her left hand that she gripped her trident, ready to counter-attack. The trident had long been a favourite weapon with tributes from District 4, many of whom claimed that spearing a fellow tribute with the three-pronged forks was little different than spearing a fish. Except fish were not generally armed with swords. As Marina brought her weapon in for the attack, Ruth, remembering her sword-fighting lessons at the Training Centre, quickly countered, using her blade to block the prongs. Again and again, the two girls clashed, neither prepared to back down first, each of them determined to take the other's life. They were fighting to kill.

It soon became clear that Marina had a slight advantage. Not only was she a Career with years of weapons training under her belt, her trident had greater reach than Ruth's sword and it could also be thrown. It could also be thrown . . . Suddenly, Ruth had an idea. It was risky and, if it failed, she would end up with a trident in her back, but she had nothing to lose except her life. She slowly turned her back on Marina and started to walk away. Marina grinned, thinking Ruth had just made the kind of mistake typical of non-Careers, and hefted her trident, preparing to throw. But that was precisely what Ruth had hoped she would do; as the trident left Marina's hand, Ruth quickly glanced over her shoulder, just long enough for her to see which direction the weapon was coming from.

Marina swore as Ruth ducked her head, causing the trident to go flying harmlessly over her. She hurried to retrieve it so that she could continue the fight and finish off the girl who had just made her look foolish in front of the entire nation. But that was exactly what Ruth had hoped she would do - and she was ready for her. Before Marina could get near her weapon, Ruth lunged and thrust her sword deep into her opponent's belly.

* * *

As Ruth pulled her sword out of Marina, the cannon boomed out. But Marina was still alive, still struggling for the few breaths that were left to her, so Ruth knew there was only one tribute for whom the cannon could have sounded. Part of her clung to the desperate hope that she might be mistaken, that it was Xanadu or Gaius, or even Lukas, who had just died elsewhere in the arena. But, in her heart, she knew the truth and, kneeling beside Sarah, she confirmed it. Sarah lay dead beside the stream, her eyes still open and gazing blankly at the sky she would never see again.

Looking down at the body of the District 6 girl, Ruth felt a pang of sadness which she quickly told herself to ignore. "She was just a tribute," she reminded herself. "You hardly even knew her. It's not like Till . . ." But, as she looked at Sarah, images began to flash through Ruth's mind. She saw Sarah called to the stage at the District 6 reaping, dressed in a chauffeur's livery for the tribute parade, wearing a pale blue dress on interview night as she talked about the baby her mother was expecting . . . Now, her unborn brother or sister would never have a chance to know her, except from what he or she was told by other family members. It was the thought of this that caused tears to well up in Ruth's eyes.

But she quickly blinked them back; this was no time to be sentimental. These were the Hunger Games and, at this stage, you could not afford to get upset over the deaths of your fellow tributes, even if they were only thirteen years old. Not if you wanted people to keep sponsoring you. Even so, Ruth thought she should at least give Sarah a little dignity in death and slowly reached out to close her eyelids. As she did so, she glimpsed something around the younger girl's neck, partly hidden by her shirt. Curious, she took a closer look, noting in passing that Sarah's chest had just started to develop the contours of a young woman, and discovered that it was a metal wheel nut threaded onto a piece of string.

"Was this your token?" she wondered out loud, even though she knew Sarah could no longer hear her. Then, remembering her original objective, she closed Sarah's eyes for the last time. The cannon fired a second time and Ruth needed no-one to tell her that Marina had just died. She knew she should get out of here so the Gamemakers could collect the bodies, but she had something to attend to first. Marina was wearing a fairly large backpack which looked as though it might contain something useful, but whatever was in it would be removed from the arena unless it was claimed. When Till's body had been taken away, some valuable items had gone with her and Ruth could not pass up the opportunity to scavenge from the body of her adversary.

She got up and walked to where Marina lay. Kneeling beside the dead District 4 girl, she used her sword to cut the straps on Marina's pack, allowing her to ease it away. Unzipping it, she quickly rifled through the contents - first aid kit, towel, flashlight, sleeping bag, water flask, netting, iodine tablets, packet of crackers, mess tin and fork, matches and half a fish. There was little doubt in her mind where the fish had come from - Marina had been from District 4, after all, and Ruth had seen evidence of her fishing skills before. Not that she would be catching any more fish . . . Ruth quickly transferred the first aid kit, the crackers, the sleeping bag and the half-fish into her own pack. Everything else was something she either had already or had managed fine without up to now. Then, she checked Sarah's pack; finding nothing she needed, she withdrew and waited as two hovercraft appeared in quick succession and removed the bodies.

* * *

Hours later, Ruth sat on the slopes of the mountain, huddled in Marina's sleeping bag, as the Capitol seal appeared in the sky. Marina's picture was shown, then Sarah's, bringing the total number of dead tributes she had seen in the sky to nineteen. And Jet, whose death recap she had missed because she was unconscious at the time, made twenty. Just four tributes remained - Xanadu, Gaius, Lukas and herself. She had not expected to get this far, but, now that she had, she found herself thinking about the possibility that she might end up being the last tribute left.

If that happened, she would be given a house in District 9's Victor's Village, be able to leave school early and never have to work in the grain industry for the rest of her life. But it also meant she would be expected to do her share of mentoring, of coaching future tributes as Thalia had coached her. And the odds were that most of the tributes she coached would end up dying, so how would she cope with that? And what if someone who was closely related to her was reaped one year? It was possible; though, as a victor, she would be exempt from the next three reapings (after which she would no longer be eligible anyway) this would not extend to her family. Her children, and Katie's, would still have to face the prospect of ending up in the arena.

But she reminded herself that she had not won yet, that three more tributes still had to die, that she could be one of those three. Even so, as she ate some of the fish from Marina's pack and drank some water from her flask - which she had refilled at the stream - she sensed that she would soon be getting out of here, one way or the other.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

As the sun rose on the eighteenth day in the arena, Ruth gazed out over the blackened remains of what had once been fertile grasslands. Curiosity had driven her to this spot, an overwhelming urge to see the damage caused by the fire which had rampaged through the arena four days earlier. Other than the mountains and the area surrounding the Cornucopia, the entire arena had been destroyed, leaving nothing but a landscape that was entirely devastated by the fierce heat, though she could make out irregular shapes here and there, shapes which looked as though they might once have been trees. There was no way any of the animals which had been caught by the flames could have escaped.

But, she remembered, it hadn't just been animals which perished in the fire. Jet had died too. She did not know precisely what had happened, but she guessed he must have been cut off somehow, unable to escape from the encroaching flames. She could not begin to imagine what his body must have looked like when it was removed from the arena after the fire - probably barely recognisible as human. It must have been almost impossible for Jet's prep team to get him looking as he had when he was alive.

One of the jobs of the prep teams was to, should it be necessary, prepare the bodies of the tributes for the final journey to their districts. Mostly this simply involved cleaning them up and dressing them in outfits which their stylists had designed for this eventuality. Any visible wounds were erased with make-up or concealed under clothing, but there were things that were beyond even the most skilled prep teams in the Capitol. They could not restore the blackened remains of a boy who had been almost completely incinerated to how he had been before the flames consumed him. And, if that was how Jet had ended up, a message advising his family not to look at his body would have accompanied him back to District 1.

But Ruth had little time to worry about what Jet's body may have looked like. The Games were not over yet; there were still three more tributes to eliminate and that meant she would have to be prepared. If she wasn't, she would end up dead, unless Xanadu, Gaius and Lukas simultaneously destroyed each other, leaving her as the default victor. But, if she was prepared, if she kept herself constantly alert for her fellow tributes, there was a chance that she might get out of here alive. At any rate, she knew the Games could not continue for much longer. There was no official time limit by which a victor had to be determined, but the people in the Capitol did not like the Games to drag on for too long. That was why the Gamemakers always took steps to force the tributes together.

There had been no deaths yesterday, but, with only four left in the arena, Ruth knew the victor could be determined any day now. It might even be today.

* * *

"Well, no sense in hanging around here," she said to herself. She noticed that she seemed to be doing that a lot lately, voicing her thoughts out loud. Demmie, she recalled, had always said talking to yourself was the first sign of madness and it wasn't entirely unknown for tributes to go mad in the arena. Indeed, Ruth recalled a boy tribute from District 10 who had become completely unhinged to the point where he had stripped off all his clothes and spent two days wandering around stark naked - until he strayed into a Gamemakers' trap and was blown sky high. It had taken at least a dozen uses of the claw to remove the pieces of his body from the arena; even then, there was very little left of him. Ruth did not remember his name, but she did recall that, after he discarded his clothes, the cameras tended to avoid showing him, except during updates.

Even the Capitol could not force people to stay by their televisions twenty-four hours a day for several weeks, so updates from the arena were shown three times a day. Broadcast in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening, these were a condensed version of the action from the last few hours, including complete footage of any deaths. But, as the Games neared their climax, everyone was required to tune in live and stay tuned in until a victor emerged. School was cancelled and everyday life in the districts ground to a halt as the people waited to see which tribute came out on top.

However, Ruth knew she wasn't going mad, at least not yet. The only reason she was thinking out loud was to remind herself what a human voice sounded like; now that she was no longer in any alliances, it was the only thing which kept her sane. Or as sane as possible given her current circumstances; if she allowed herself to let go, there was a strong possibility that she could suffer a similar fate to the boy who had thrown away his clothes. She had to keep hold of some sense of her old self, of who she had been before her name was drawn from the reaping ball, even though she knew that could be easier said than done. Being in the arena changed you. Indeed, many youngsters who won the Games (especially those who did not come from the Career districts) were never the same again; Autumn, who had gone from an open and friendly girl to a troubled woman who used alcohol to blot out her memories of the arena, was a typical example.

Ruth's hand strayed towards the bracelet she wore, the bracelet Katie had made for her. It gave her a sense of connection to the world outside the arena, reminded her that it still existed. And that reminded her that her friends and family were probably watching her right now, unless they were watching one or more of the other three surviving tributes. She had no way of knowing, but she did know that, if two or more tributes were in the same area, the cameras would concentrate on them, especially at this stage when any encounter between tributes invariably led to a fight.

She turned her back on the blackened landscape. "Better get going. If the Careers find me, they find me. But I'm not going down without a fight," she vowed, gripping her sword. Looking at her, few would have recognised her as the girl who had worn a golden dress and crown to represent a field of wheat at the tribute parade; after nearly three weeks in the arena, she looked like a feral creature. Her hair was unkempt and unwashed, her clothes dirty, her body much thinner than it used to be after weeks of mostly living on berries and roots. The half-fish she had found in Marina's pack - which was now almost completely gone - had seemed like a special treat and she had not tasted meat for several days. And, with gifts from sponsors now prohibitively expensive, she knew the odds of receiving any more food from outside were almost zero.

She moved on, heading into the mountains, unsure what she would find there but determined to face it.

* * *

At mid-morning, she stopped to eat her first meal of the day, which consisted of the last bit of fish and a couple of crackers washed down with a mouthful of water. That left her with just the crackers and a handful of roots and berries, which should last her at least a few more days if she was careful. No doubt there was something edible growing on the slopes of the mountains, but, without Till to guide her and show her what was safe, she dared not take the risk. She knew Sarah and Max had been living off stolen supplies, that they must have had a cache somewhere that might still have some food in it. But she had no way of knowing where to look.

However, something told her that it didn't matter if she could find food or not. The Games were drawing to a close and, living or dead, she knew she would get out of here soon. All she had to do was hold out until then . . .

Suddenly, something caught her attention, something moving on top of a cliff on the horizon. It was too far away for her to see clearly and she had no binoculars, but it looked like two people were having a fight. And, since the only other people in the arena were her fellow tributes, she knew it had to be two of them. But which two? Ruth could not tell from this distance and, at this late stage in the Games, it hardly mattered. All it meant was that there would shortly be at least one less tribute to worry about.

She knew the viewers at home would currently be watching this fight and she almost envied them. A cliff-top battle was just the sort of edge-of-your-seat event that went down well in the Capitol; people would be taking bets on the outcome even as the two tributes fought for their very survival. And this wasn't even the fight which would determine the victor, just a precursor. Nonetheless, there was no way anyone would want to miss seeing the outcome of this fight, a cliffhanger in more ways than one.

Eventually, as the two tributes struggled, locked together with neither willing to let go, the inevitable happened. One of the pair slipped and went plummeting over the sheer drop, taking his opponent with him; Ruth could tell at least one of them was a boy by the scream which echoed through the arena as they fell. But was he Gaius or Lukas? Before Ruth had time to wonder, they hit the ground with a sickening thud and, seconds later, the cannon fired. But only once, which meant one of the tributes who had just fallen off the edge of the cliff was still alive. She began running in the direction of the cliff, not to see if she could help - there was no sense in helping someone she would shortly have to kill anyway - but to see who it was that had fallen. For some reason, she did not want to wait for this evening's death recap.

* * *

Reaching the foot of the cliff, she saw them lying where they had fallen. Gaius still gripped his mace, while Lukas was holding some netting as if he had planned to use it to entangle his opponent. At first, Ruth couldn't quite place where the netting had come from, but then she remembered that there had been some netting in the pack which originally belonged to Shaun, until Lukas inherited it. She and her one-time allies had been unsure what to do with the netting, though they had guessed it might be useful as a weapon or, at least, a trap. Now it looked as though Lukas had tried to put that idea into practice.

Ruth knelt beside Gaius and gently touched him. He gave no response and she needed no-one to tell her why; even so, she wanted to confirm it. The sight of his neck, broken and twisted into an unnatural position, was all she needed and she did not bother to check for a pulse. There was nothing for her to do here - she and Lukas were no longer allies - so she slowly got to her feet and turned to go. Even though Lukas was her district partner and had been her ally until a few days ago, she knew she would have to leave him to die. But as she turned, she heard a faint voice, the voice of a dying person, whisper her name. "Ruth?"

Until that moment, she had been prepared to walk away. Instead, she hurried over to Lukas and knelt beside him, lifting his head onto her lap. She could tell he did not have long; no-one could survive a fall such as the one he and Gaius had just taken. Ruth was no medical expert, but she knew enough to know that Lukas must have broken most of the bones in his body and that he almost certainly had some form of internal injury. There was nothing she, or anyone else, could do for him except wait until the end came. She had found some painkillers in Marina's first aid kit, but she had left everything except her sword behind when she ran towards the cliff. Otherwise, she might have considered giving him an overdose, as she had seen a tribute do to a fatally injured ally in a previous Games. Alternatively, she could have used her sword to speed his end, but she did not, instead choosing to stay beside him and wait for the inevitable boom of the cannon.

"Long time no see," Lukas managed to say, then grimaced in pain.

"Don't try to talk," Ruth told him, fighting to control her emotions. Lukas was dying and, however much she wished she could regard him as just another tribute, the fact remained that they had been through a lot together. In fact, she recalled, it had been he who had proposed their alliance in the first place, saying it would help them to stay alive longer than they would if they tried to go it alone. But they had both known it would inevitably end with one or both of them dying, which was why Ruth had decided not to go looking for Lukas when they became separated while fleeing the fire. Even so, she now found herself kneeling beside the boy who had been her district partner and ally, watching as the life ebbed out of him.

"He came at me out of . . . nowhere," Lukas gasped. "Armed with . . . a mace. I tried to . . . fight him with my knife, but he . . . disarmed me. The netting . . . from my pack . . ."

"Yes, I remember. You got it from that District 4 boy I killed."

"I thought I could use it . . . to slow him up." There was no need for Lukas to say that he meant Gaius, not Shaun. "But he . . . grabbed hold of it . . . and we both went . . . over the . . . edge. Ruth . . ." There was a sudden urgency in Lukas's voice, even though he was finding it a struggle to speak, the urgency of someone who was about to utter his last words.

Ruth leaned closer to him. "Yes?" she asked, her voice shaking no matter how hard she tried to control it.

"It's up to . . . you now. Everyone back . . . home is . . . counting on you. Do your . . . best . . ." Lukas gave one last gasp and, for the twenty-second time since the Games began, the cannon fired. Ruth stayed where she was for several minutes, her mind filled with memories of everything she and Lukas had been through in the last few weeks. Being called at the reaping, wearing golden costumes in the tribute parade, arriving in the arena, fighting the lizard mutts, fleeing the Gamemakers' fire . . . Then, remembering that the Gamemakers never collected bodies as long as there were any living tributes in the vicinity, she slowly got to her feet and turned to walk away, but not before taking a final look at the boy who had just died in her arms.

No emotion registered on Ruth's face as she walked away from where the bodies of Gaius and Lukas lay. She could not allow it to, not now that she had reached the final two; grief was a luxury she could ill afford. Perhaps, if she got out of here alive, she would have time to mourn Lukas's death, but she currently had other things to worry about. Xanadu was out there somewhere and she was Ruth's main priority at the moment.

* * *

"And there you have it! The final fight in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games will be between Xanadu Keller of District 1 and Ruth Waterhouse of District 9! Which of these young tributes will emerge triumphant and bestow honour upon her district?"

Claudius Templesmith's words could currently be heard coming from every television set in Panem, all of which showed him in the studio which had been set up at the Games Headquarters. It was from here that he and his team delivered their commentaries as the Games unfolded, analysing the tributes' actions and commenting on their strategies. And, throughout the Games, they had given regular updates on the odds for each tribute, as well as any other betting that had occurred. And some bets were pretty outlandish even by the Capitol's standards, such as the woman who had wagered enough money to fill six wheelbarrows on there being a tribute from District 1 in the final two. Now, with the field of tributes reduced to the girls from Districts 1 and 9, she was in for a very large windfall indeed.

Already, bets on the final outcome of these Games were starting to come in. Most predicted that Xanadu would be the victor; she was a Career, after all, whereas Ruth was from District 9, a district which had only had four previous tributes (including Ethan and Thalia) make it this far. However, there were those who had seen Ruth's fight against Marina and reckoned this particular District 9 tribute was worthy of notice. True, Ruth had only been credited with two kills against Xanadu's four, but Xanadu had not been directly responsible for a tribute's death since she shot Jennie on the second day. Not only that, but both the tributes Ruth had killed had been Careers.

Those watching in the districts were all waiting for the final outcome as well. Not because they had any money riding on the two remaining tributes - many of them could not afford it - but because it meant the annual ordeal of watching their young people die on live TV would soon be over. After the Games ended, they would still have the presentation of the victor and the final interview to get through, but it would soon all be over and they would be able to get on with their lives. At least until the victor was taken on a tour of the districts later in the year.

* * *

Ruth was constantly on guard, her sword gripped tightly in her hand, as she walked down the slope that led to the Cornucopia. Now that all her fellow tributes except Xanadu were dead, she knew it was only a question of time before the two of them must face each other in combat. She did not know when or where she and Xanadu would meet, but she knew she had to be ready, that she and the District 1 girl could be drawn into a fight which only one of them could survive at any moment. And that fight was sure to be brutal and bloody; the finale of the Hunger Games nearly always was.

She thought about her opponent's likely strategy. Xanadu had been the first tribute to make a kill on the opening day, shooting Pine in the chest with a crossbow bolt, which suggested that she liked to take her opponents out as quickly as possible. Which would explain why the crossbow was her weapon of choice; it might be slower to load than an ordinary bow, but it still gave her the advantage of being able to kill from a distance. And that, Ruth knew, meant she would have to get in close to prevent Xanadu from using her crossbow, not any easy task by any means. Nevertheless, she had to try; she had already vowed not to go down without a fight and she was still determined to give Xanadu a taste of her sword. Xanadu, the daughter of a previous victor, one of three youngsters who had volunteered for these Games . . .

Suddenly, Ruth heard a loud cawing coming from overhead and looked up to see what seemed to be a flock of crows flying towards her.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

They were not ordinary crows; Ruth could tell that because they had appeared too suddenly for it to be a chance encounter with a wild flock. That meant the Gamemakers must had unleashed them - probably from an invisible hovercraft - and she knew any creatures the Gamemakers unleashed on tributes were pretty much guaranteed to be mutts. She had already encountered one lot of mutts since arriving in the arena and now it looked like she was faced with another.

Pausing, Ruth looked up at the flock hovering overhead. Outwardly, with their jet black feathers and sharp beaks, they looked no different from any other crows she had seen. But, if they were mutts, there was no telling what they might be capable of; mutts were bred as living weapons, after all . . . The next thing Ruth knew, three of the crows had swooped down on her and were attacking her with beaks and talons; she threw up her hands to protect her face, but that only seemed to encourage the birds, several of which flew down to join the first three.

"All right! I get the message!" Ruth shouted, extracting herself from the flock. The second she continued walking in the direction she had been heading, the crows stopped attacking, though they continued their relentless pursuit. Now, there was no doubt in her mind that these crows were mutts and that their purpose was to drive her towards the Cornucopia, where the lack of any cover besides the golden horn meant she and Xanadu would have to fight it out. No doubt another flock had been unleashed on Xanadu and was even now herding her towards the Cornucopia. Before the day was through, the female tributes from Districts 1 and 9 would be pitted against each other in a fight which must inevitably end with the death of one of them. By dawn tomorrow, the Forty-fourth Hunger Games could be over.

As she made her way towards the place where her fate would be determined one way or the other, Ruth's mind was filled with the faces of seventeen of the twenty-two tributes who had fallen along the way, all those who did not come from the Career districts. She could not recall all their names, but they seemed to have etched themselves on her memory. Because she would soon be joining them? Or because they wanted to will her on from beyond the grave? She could believe that of Lukas and Till, possibly even Sarah, but the others, the ones to whom she had never spoken . . .

Suddenly, Lukas's last words came back to her: "Do your best." And, at the same moment, she imagined everyone in District 9 assembled in front of their televisions, awaiting the final battle. Not since Thalia took the crown ten years ago had a tribute from 9 made it into the final two; now, Ruth was carrying the hopes of an entire district, several thousand people willing her on, willing her to put up a good fight. She gripped her sword and, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart, silently promised not to let them down.

* * *

Arriving at the Cornucopia, Ruth found it still standing in the middle of the field, surrounded by the twenty-four metal plates which had launched the tributes into the arena. But, while it had been filled with weapons and supplies on that occasion, it was now completely empty, just a hollow golden horn. There was no sign that a battle which had claimed the lives of ten young people had taken place here; in fact, the whole scene looked a little too innocent for Ruth's liking. Where was Xanadu? Ruth had expected to find her opponent ready and waiting for her, had begun to head for the Cornucopia because she reasoned that was the most likely place for them to meet up even before the crow mutts appeared to herd her in that direction. But she could see no-one.

She sat down on one of the plates, not stopping to think about which tribute might have stood on it, and waited for Xanadu to appear. That, she knew, could happen at any moment; the audience in the Capitol would not appreciate the sight of a tribute sitting around, especially at this late stage. At the same time, the crow mutts began to circle the skies above the Cornucopia, as though they were ordinary crows waiting for the chance to pick over some carrion. Except Ruth knew it was more likely that they were there to keep her from trying to escape.

It was late afternoon when a second flock appeared, driving Xanadu before them. The District 1 girl was carrying her crossbow, which had been loaded with a bolt in preparation for this final conflict, her face grimly determined as she advanced on her enemy. "Ready to die?" she asked, raising her crossbow and preparing to fire.

"We'll see about that," countered Ruth. Pine had died because she was focusing on getting the axe which had become Jet's weapon, not on the fact that Xanadu was already armed and poised to attack. But Ruth was not about to let her guard down so easily; she had seen enough Hunger Games battles to know that the slightest lapse could get you killed, meaning you always had to stay one step ahead of your fellow tributes, particularly if you made it into the final two. Throughout the Games, she, Lukas and Till had adopted a strategy of evasion, of keeping away from the Careers and playing for time. Now, with just herself and Xanadu left, she decided to adopt an evasive strategy again and hope she would eventually be able to go on the attack.

As Xanadu fired her first bolt, Ruth dodged out of the way, grinning as the bolt zipped harmlessly past her and landed just past the ring of metal plates. Xanadu did not go to retrieve her bolt, which told Ruth that she knew one foot outside the designated battle ring would cause the crow mutts to descend on her. Instead, she readied another bolt, determined to make sure this one found its mark, though she was not aiming to kill just yet; this was the finale of the Games and she knew the audience in the Capitol didn't like it if the last tribute to fall went down too easily. So she was aiming her bolts at parts of Ruth's anatomy where they not be immediately fatal but would cause a lot of damage.

Ruth, keeping a careful grip on her sword, began backing away, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the girl who was trying to kill her. She wished she had thought to recover either Shaun's spear or Marina's trident after she killed each of the District 4 tributes; a projectile weapon of her own would have been useful here. But all she could do was play for time and hope she would eventually be able to get close enough to use her sword. Even if she couldn't defeat Xanadu, she at least wanted to die knowing she had fought back, that she had not just stood there and let the District 1 girl kill her. Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her upper arm and she needed no-one to tell her the cause; the second of Xanadu's bolts had found its mark.

Luckily it was her left arm that had been hit and, being right-handed, she should still be able to fight back should the opportunity arise. In the meantime, she gripped the bolt sticking out of her arm and, gritting her teeth, pulled it free. Then, to make sure Xanadu couldn't retrieve it and use it against her again, she tossed it beyond the metal plates. It was then that the thought struck her. Xanadu's supply of crossbow bolts could not be unlimited and, if she lost all of them, her crossbow would be useless. The trouble was, there was no way of knowing how many bolts she carried.

* * *

Ruth quickly climbed onto the nearest plate, which happened to be the one Lukas had stood on at the start of the Games. "Come and get me!" she called, smiling as Xanadu turned and readied another bolt. Seconds before Xanadu fired, Ruth ducked, causing the bolt to go flying over her head. And, as Ruth had hoped, it landed beyond the invisible boundary which the crow mutts patrolled.

For a time, the battle continued in much the same fashion; Ruth, standing on a different plate each time, called out to Xanadu, goading her to try and hit her. Then, as Xanadu took aim, Ruth took evasive action and the bolts ended up where neither girl dared go. Presently, Xanadu reached into her pouch for a bolt, only to find that it was empty. "What's the matter?" Ruth taunted, leaning casually against the side of the Cornucopia. "Out of ammunition?"

Xanadu's response was a string of obscenities, the mildest of which was "you District 9 bitch". Like most Careers, she hated being made to look foolish, especially if the person doing it was from one of the non-Career districts. And Ruth had just shown her up in front of the whole nation; a tribute from District 9 had caused her to waste all her crossbow bolts, rendering the weapon useless. All right, then, she would just have to use the knife she had taken as a back-up weapon - and she would make sure it did its job. She tossed her crossbow aside and, pulling her knife out of her belt, charged straight towards Ruth and prepared to thrust the blade into her.

Ruth quickly parried with her sword, finally able to go on the offensive, and the clang of metal on metal soon echoed throughout the arena. Cut, thrust, parry - the lessons in sword-fighting which she had received at the Training Centre seemed to have etched themselves onto Ruth's mind. Time lost all meaning; the only thing she was aware of was the girl who was her opponent, the girl who was out to kill her. Night fell and, as the anthem played, the Capitol seal appeared in the sky, closely followed by the faces of first Gaius, then Lukas. But Ruth was so focused on her fight with Xanadu that she did not even look up as the image of her one-time ally was projected over the arena. All that mattered to her was the knowledge that it was all or nothing; she would either leave the arena victorious or she would leave dead, as twenty-two others had already done.

For hour after hour Xanadu and Ruth clashed, their fight illuminated by a full moon which looked far too bright to be natural. No doubt that was the Gamemakers' doing; they must have created a projection of the moon and made it much brighter than normal so that viewers watching at home could see what was happening. Nothing was ever quite what it seemed in the arena, a place where that which appeared to be completely harmless might be lethal, a place where the environment could be manipulated to suit those running the Games.

Just when it seemed as though the fight was going to last forever, Xanadu, wounded in several places, sank to her knees, panting. Ruth watched with grim satisfaction, thinking that her opponent must have reached the point where she could not continue, the point where all that remained to be done was to deliver the killing blow and claim victory. Raising her sword above her head, Ruth charged - and was quickly stopped in her tracks as Xanadu suddenly leapt to her feet and slashed Ruth across the cheek with her knife.

"Right into my trap," Xanadu said calmly, as Ruth tried to staunch the flow of blood. "And that's just for starters." She wiped her knife on her trousers and prepared to attack again.

* * *

Ruth could not believe she had let herself be taken in by Xanadu's ruse. It was obvious now that the District 1 girl had not been on the verge of collapse at all, that she had been pretending that she was in order to draw in her opponent. And she, Ruth, had fallen for it, a mistake which could cost her dear. There was no room for error in the Hunger Games, especially when it came to the final battle; a tribute's ability to judge a situation could literally mean the difference between life and death. She had got off lightly this time, but she knew she could not afford to make another mistake.

But for how much longer would she be able to continue, wounded and exhausted as she was? Xanadu was a Career and, as such, was proving to be a tough opponent; her pretending to be beaten could be just one of the tricks she had up her sleeve. Still, Ruth was grateful that it was Xanadu, and not Gaius, whom she was facing in this final battle; out of all the tributes who had made the final four, Gaius had been the toughest. But not tough enough to survive falling off the cliff, she reflected, recalling how Gaius and Lukas had dragged each other over the edge. She wondered if Lukas had deliberately allowed himself to fall, sacrificing himself in order to take Gaius out and to make sure he and Ruth would not both be in the final two. They had considered the possibility that it might come down to the two of them, but neither of them had really wanted to face it.

Just then, the sight of Xanadu raising her knife reminded Ruth that she still had a battle to fight. And it was becoming increasingly obvious that her opponent was not going to go down easily, not that she had expected anything else; this was the finale of the Forty-fourth Hunger Games and the audience in the Capitol would want the action to be drawn out as long as possible. But Ruth was not finished yet; she quickly parried the knife with her sword, trying desperately to think of some means of turning things in her favour. But how? Xanadu was a highly trained Career, a girl who had been raised with the expectation that she might one day become a tribute, whereas Ruth was the daughter of a granary owner, with no previous experience of fighting another human being apart from her battle with Marina two days earlier.

All the while, the crow mutts had continued circling, never letting up for a second, ready to swoop in and attack the moment either of the two tributes strayed beyond the boundary marked by the ring of metal plates. Perhaps, Ruth thought as she glanced up at the sky, she might be able to use them to her advantage, if she could somehow get Xanadu into the right position. It was risky, but it might be the only chance she had.

Without saying a word, she dropped her sword and calmly stepped onto the nearest plate, hoping that her ruse would work. Xanadu stared at her in disbelief, wondering what her opponent thought she was playing at, casting her weapon aside and leaving herself completely vulnerable. And as for standing on the plate like that . . . "Giving up already?" Xanadu called, falling into a trap similar to the one she had used against Ruth.

"You . . . you've beaten me." Ruth tried to make her voice sound even more ragged than it was already. "Please . . . just end it . . ." She held her arms by her sides to show that she would not try to fight back as Xanadu delivered the fatal blow. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest as though it was trying to complete a lifetime of beats in a few minutes, as though it knew it would soon be permanently stilled. Except, if her plan worked, it would be Xanadu who became the last tribute to fall.

"As you wish," Xanadu said, calmly stepping onto the plate, her knife drawn. "This fight's been dragging on too long anyway." She pressed her knife against Ruth's chest, preparing to thrust it in and end the Games. "Any last requests?"

Ruth's response was so swift that Xanadu had no time to react. She grabbed hold of the hand in which Xanadu held her knife, twisting it behind her opponent's back and forcing Xanadu to drop the knife. Then, taking advantage of the element of surprise, she forced Xanadu to the outside edge of the plate, the point beyond which she must not step unless she wanted to be set upon by a flock of crow mutts. Already, several of the birds were gathering as if in anticipation of the moment when a victim fell into their midst.

* * *

"W - what are you doing?!" Xanadu cried, realising a fraction of a second too late what Ruth's plan was. This was not how it was supposed to end. She was a Career who had trained for the Games nearly all her life, who had dreamed of emulating her father's victory thirty years earlier. She was not supposed to lose, especially not to a non-Career; she was supposed to leave this arena as a victor. She was supposed to be the one to whom President Snow gave the victor's crown, the one who . . .

Before Xanadu could complete her thought, Ruth gave her a push and sent her tumbling off the plate to land just outside the invisible boundary around the Cornucopia. The crow mutts were on her in an instant, pecking and clawing at her as she tried in vain to scramble to her feet and flee; unarmed, she could do little else and, even if she had managed to keep hold of one of her weapons, it would have done little good against the large flock of birds. Her crossbow might have enabled her to take out some of the crows, but the size of the flock meant she would barely make a dent in their numbers. She cried out, begging Ruth to help her, forgetting in her panic that the two of them were enemies, deadly enemies. But Ruth made no move, knowing she would be attacked herself the instant she stepped outside the boundary; she could not save Xanadu even if she wanted to. Two of the crows swooped towards Xanadu's face; she screamed in agony as they pecked out her eyes, leaving her with nothing but empty sockets and streaks of blood pouring down her face like red tears.

Still the crow mutts continued to attack. Ruth looked on, forcing herself to ignore Xanadu's cries, as the birds worked away at their victim, who was now barely visible under a mass of black feathers. This was what the crows had been created for, to herd the last two tributes towards the Cornucopia for the final conflict and to attack them if they strayed beyond the invisible boundary they had patrolled throughout the fight. Knowing this, knowing mutts were almost invariably bred as killing machines, Ruth had deliberately sent Xanadu into their midst. Right now, every television screen in Panem must be showing close-ups of the District 1 girl, blinded and helpless, pinned down by the flock as they continued to peck and claw her to death.

Gradually, as the sky began to lighten, Xanadu's screams turned to whimpers and, a short time after that, she ceased to make any sound at all. The sun had just made its first appearance on the horizon to the east when the cannon fired.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

As the crow mutts vanished back to wherever they had come from, Ruth looked down at the body of the girl who had spent much of the previous night trying to kill her. Xanadu was almost unrecognisible as the same girl who had looked so regal in her chariot costume during the tribute parade, who had worn a sparkly silver dress for her pre-Games interview. She lay dead on the ground, her face mutilated by the crows' beaks and talons, her green eyes completely destroyed. It was all over, Ruth realised; she had won. But she felt no sense of triumph; all she could think of was the twelve boys and eleven girls who had died along the way.

Ruth slowly turned her back on Xanadu and, limping as she went, withdrew from the scene and waited for the hovercraft which would remove her opponent's body from the arena. "Lukas, Till," she whispered, her mind turning to her dead allies, "I know you can't hear me now, but I did it. I won." But, even as she said those words, she knew she had only "won" in the sense that she was alive while twenty-three other tributes were dead. As was the case with all those who survived the Hunger Games, hers was a Pyrrhic victory. However, she did not have time to think about it before a hovercraft appeared and the claw dropped down; Ruth's last sight of Xanadu was of her dead body being lifted off the ground and into the hovercraft. Then, the hovercraft vanished, leaving Ruth completely alone in the arena.

Seconds later, trumpets began to blare. In the arena, this sound meant there was about to be an important announcement, such as an invitation to a "feast", though that had not happened this year. However, the trumpets were also sounded at the end of the Games, once the final body had been removed, to declare the last surviving tribute the winner. Sure enough, it wasn't long before Claudius Templesmith's voice was heard, amplified so that it was audible above the ongoing fanfare.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Forty-fourth Hunger Games have reached their conclusion! A victor has been decided! Congratulations go to Ruth Waterhouse, the female tribute from District 9!"

A second hovercraft appeared directly above Ruth's head and, as had happened on the morning the Games began, a ladder dropped down. Somehow, despite being wounded and exhausted, Ruth found the strength to reach up and grasp the rungs, the current instantly freezing her into position. However, she knew what to expect this time and was even grateful for it, knowing she barely had the strength to hang on by herself.

* * *

The next thing Ruth remembered was waking up to find herself in a bare white room, a room which did not seem to have any doors. Everywhere she looked, all she could see was white - there was no colour of any sort - and nor was there any sign of another human being apart from herself. She lay in a narrow bed, the sheets soft against her bare skin, listening to the faint beeping noise she could hear behind her. Not that there seemed to be much else to do in this blank room, apart from wonder where she was and what she was doing here.

"W - where . . .?" she tried to say, only to be cut off as the wall directly in front of her slid open and someone entered the room. The someone in question was a young man, probably in his early twenties, whose white tunic and downcast expression marked him out as an Avox. He was carrying a glass of water in his hand and, as he drew level with Ruth's bed, he pressed a button which adjusted the bed to allow her to sit up. Next, he handed her the glass, then made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and touched them to his lips as though he was taking a drink. Ruth needed no-one to tell her what he was trying to say.

She drank, noting as she did so that the water seemed to have a slightly odd taste. But perhaps that was because she had grown used to the taste of water which had been treated with iodine. The Avox stood beside her all the while, having clearly been instructed to do so, and her mind was filled with questions she longed to ask, questions about who he was and what crime he had committed to end up as a mute servant. But she remembered being told that no-one was supposed to speak to an Avox except to give an order, so she refrained from saying anything. Even so, as the Avox took her now empty glass and turned to go, she decided to risk just one question. "How long have I been here?"

The Avox turned at the sound of her voice and held up his right hand with all five fingers extended. Then, doubtless fearing that he would be in trouble for even this brief communication, he hurried away, leaving Ruth alone with her thoughts once more. Five fingers extended could only mean five days had passed since she was lifted out of the arena, the sole survivor out of twenty-four tributes. She tried to work out how long she had been away from home, but, before she could get very far, something was injected into her arm via a tube inserted into her vein, causing her to fall into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

The victor was never crowned immediately after being removed from the arena; he or she almost invariably had injuries which needed to be treated, not to mention that any scarring would also need to be fixed. For that reason, an underground hospital had been built beneath the Training Centre and this was the first place the victor was taken on arriving back in the Capitol. Here, Capitol surgeons worked round the clock to heal the often badly injured and half-starved youngster in preparation for victory night, the night when they would be presented with the victor's crown on live TV. And, in the Capitol, appearances were everything; a battle-scarred, feral-looking victor was not something which could be shown on every television screen in Panem.

In Ruth's case, it was nine days before she was deemed fit. Dressed in a brand new outfit identical to the one she had worn in the arena, she emerged from her hospital room to find Septima, Thalia and Lucretia waiting for her, waiting to greet the girl who had survived while twenty-three other youngsters had not. There was no sign of Ethan, but Ruth had not expected to see him; he would have accompanied Lukas's body back to District 9. She felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of her late partner and of all the others who had died in the nearly three weeks spent in the arena, but she had no time to think about it before Septima spoke.

"Bet you're happy to see us, eh?" She looked the same as ever, Ruth noted, right down to the mint green hair, in which she wore a large fascinator shaped like an ear of wheat. "Do you like it?" she asked, turning so that Ruth could see her hair accessory more clearly. "I bought it especially to commemorate a District 9 victory."

"It's . . . OK," said Ruth, who privately thought, as she did with everything associated with the Capitol, that it looked outlandish. For one thing, rather than being the pale golden colour of a real ear of wheat, Septima's fascinator was a blinding bright yellow, as were her dress and shoes. The woman looked like - there was no other way to put it - a walking banana. Back in District 9, Ruth's family were among the few who could afford to buy bananas, though they only did so a few times a year. Even so, when she saw Septima's choice of outfit, Ruth couldn't help thinking of the bunches of bananas on sale (for a price few could afford) in the fruit-and-veg shop. But she decided not to mention this out loud.

Accompanied only by Lucretia, whose spiky hair had gone from purple to electric blue since the two of them last met, Ruth made her way up to the lobby, from which she would take the elevator to the ninth floor. There, she would be given her first proper meal in several days, before her prep team and Lucretia helped her to get ready for tonight. In a few hours' time, she would be sitting on the victor's chair, watching as a recording showing the highlights of the Games she had recently won was played back. That same recording would be beamed into every household in Panem, forcing the people to relive every death, to watch their loved ones fall once more. Thus did the Capitol continue to punish the districts for their attempted rebellion.

On arriving in the lobby, the first thing that struck Ruth was how empty and silent it was. A month ago, it had been thronged with costumed tributes who had just arrived at the Training Centre after the tribute parade, as well as all the escorts, stylists and mentors. But now it was completely deserted, except for the two guards who watched in silence as Ruth and Lucretia crossed the floor to the elevator.

* * *

The meal was simple by the Capitol's standards, just a ham salad, bread roll and a glass of water; no-one wanted to risk giving Ruth any of the usual rich fare so soon after she had left the arena. For the last few days, she had been given small amounts of easily digested food to allow her stomach, shrunk after nearly three weeks of near starvation, to recover. Now she was ready to try a proper meal, albeit a simple one with her portions strictly controlled so that she didn't make herself ill from eating more than she could currently cope with.

Ten minutes later, she was standing naked in front of a full-length mirror. The first thing that struck her was how flawless her skin was; there was no sign of any of the injuries she had picked up in the arena. The bite mark the lizard mutt had left on her leg, the puncture wound left in her arm by Xanadu's crossbow bolt, even the small mark on her forearm where the tracker had been implanted into her skin . . . All these, and more, had been surgically erased until the only sign that she had been in a Hunger Games arena was the fact that she was somewhat thinner than she had been before. But, given time, her body would fill out again. In the meantime, she took a shower, her first since the one she had taken just before she was launched into the arena.

Ruth remained silent as her prep team set to work styling her hair and applying make-up to her face. But they chattered all the while about topics ranging from the Capitol's ever-changing fashions to the Games, though Ruth noticed that, when the Games were mentioned, they were always discussed from the perspective of someone watching in the Capitol. Someone who would never have any of their own loved ones at stake, would never understand what an ordeal the Games were for those watching in the districts. Ruth longed to yell at her prep team, to call them every rude name she could think of, but she resisted the urge and tried to ignore the gossip going on around her.

Just as Ruth was beginning to wonder if she could stand one more minute of inane chatter, Lucretia came in, carrying the outfit Ruth was going to wear tonight. This consisted of an ankle-length dress in a soft peach colour, the waist of which was accented with a satin sash, and matching slippers. Within moments, Ruth was admiring her reflection in the mirror, unable to believe that she was the same girl who had recently been fighting for her very survival. Everything that had happened to her in the arena felt like a bad dream and she had to remind herself that it had really happened, that twenty-three other young people had died so that she could be here now.

"You ready?" asked Lucretia, her words cutting across Ruth's thoughts.

"Yes, thank you," replied Ruth, taking one last look in the mirror.

"Good - then, let's go." And, with that, Lucretia led Ruth and the prep team out to the waiting elevator.

* * *

"And here she is! The victor in the Forty-fourth Hunger Games - Ruth Waterhouse!"

Caesar Flickerman's words were greeted with tumultuous applause as Ruth, standing on a platform similar to the one which had launched her into the arena, emerged from beneath the stage. Thalia, dressed in a white evening gown and sporting a sequined patch over her missing eye, took her hand and led her towards the ornate chair on which the victor sat to watch the highlights and receive his or her crown. It was ten years almost to the day since Thalia had stood on this stage, only she was the victor then, a sixteen-year-old girl still adjusting to having lost the sight in her left eye. Now, after seeing nine of the tributes she had gone on to train die in the arena, she was back as a mentor. For only the third time in forty-four years, a tribute from District 9 had won the Hunger Games.

Caesar told a few jokes to kill time before the recap of this year's Games began. Every year, a selection of highlights from the Games was prepared for broadcast on victory night before the presentation of the crown; the resulting film lasted for three hours and was mandatory viewing. Soon, all eyes were directed towards the TV monitors which had been set up on the stage, watching as the Capitol seal appeared to mark the beginning of the recap.

As always, the recap began with the reapings; Ruth, sitting on her gilded chair, watched as she and her fellow tributes took to the stage. Then came the tribute parade, including close-ups of all the youngsters in their costumes, followed by the training scores, then the interviews. Somehow, whoever had put these highlights together had managed to fit in at least a soundbite from all twenty-four tributes, but only Ruth's interview was replayed in full, since she was the victor. This, however, only emphasised the fact that twenty-three of the kids being interviewed had not survived.

Then came the morning the Games began, starting with the camera panning round the tributes as they stood on their plates at the Cornucopia, waiting for the gong to sound. The bloodbath which followed had lasted just over three hours but had somehow been condensed into twenty minutes; even so, all ten deaths were shown. Ruth, who had not stuck around for the bloodbath at the time, now saw how Xanadu's crossbow had taken out not only Pine but Freda and Marc as well, how Shaun had speared Forrest as the latter attempted to flee, how Kris had been wounded as he tried in vain to protect Lorna but somehow managed to get away . . . Finally, once the fighting was over and the survivors had dispersed, the ten dead tributes were shown in close-up, ending with a shot of Bessie, her skull split open by Jet's axe. Ruth felt physically sick as she saw that the District 10 girl's brain had been exposed; it took all her willpower to force herself to keep watching.

Somehow, Ruth managed to get through the next two hours or so, during which she watched her fellow tributes die one by one. In the process, she learned that the Careers had spent the whole of the first night in the arena chasing Jennie down before cornering her in the early hours of the following morning, that Kris had lain wounded in the long grass for several days before he succumbed to his injuries. She saw Alice having her skull bashed in, Juno and Till being overwhelmed by the lizard mutts, Max being beheaded, Jet burning to death . . . Towards the end, with twenty tributes dead already, the cliff-top fight between Gaius and Lukas, which had ended with both boys falling to their deaths, was shown. Then came the grand finale, the fight between Xanadu and Ruth to determine the victor.

Ruth watched as she and Xanadu clashed, both of them picking up injuries in the process, saw herself push her opponent off the plate and into the midst of the crow mutts, which then proceeded to peck and claw her to death. A final close-up of Xanadu's mutilated and eyeless face was shown, before the recap ended with the announcement of Ruth's victory.

Ruth barely had time to think about what she had just seen before the anthem began to play and President Snow himself took to the stage, followed by a girl of around eight or nine years old who carried a golden crown on a velvet cushion. All eyes were on the president as he took the crown and slowly lowered it onto Ruth's head, officially crowning her the victor of the Forty-fourth Hunger Games. Moments later, everyone in the audience had erupted into loud cheering and applause at the sight of the newest victor.

"And that concludes the victory ceremony," Caesar said after what felt like several hours. "But please tune in tomorrow for our winning tribute's final interview." He made it sound like an invitation, but everyone knew it would be mandatory viewing.

* * *

Unlike the pre-Games interviews, the final interview took place on the winning district's floor in the Training Centre, with no live audience. So, the following afternoon, Ruth found herself sitting in the victor's chair (which had been moved to the ninth floor) once more, reliving her experiences of the last few weeks. The dress she wore this time was light green with a few small bows around the skirt for trimming. In fact, it was almost the exact same shade of green as the dress she had worn to her first reaping three years earlier, not that she had time to think about that because she was too busy answering Caesar's questions.

"Now, Ruth," Caesar said at one point, "when your escort called your name at the reaping, did you ever imagine you'd be sitting here now?"

"To be honest, I thought it was more likely I'd be dead by now," Ruth replied, recalling how she had felt when Septima called her name. However, she had come through the Games alive while twenty-three others had not. Thoughts of her fellow tributes filled her mind every waking hour, especially those who had been her allies or whose deaths she had caused. It was almost as if they blamed her for surviving while they had all been killed one way or another and she knew she would carry that burden of survivor's guilt for the rest of her life.

Ruth never knew how she managed to get through the interview without breaking down, but she did. She even managed to laugh at Caesar's trademark attempts at banter. But what she wanted more than anything was to go home to District 9, to see her friends and family, even though she knew things would never be quite the same again.


	18. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

A month had passed since Ruth returned to District 9, the sole survivor out of twenty-four tributes. During that time, she had tried to pick up the pieces of her life as best she could, only to find that it was easier said than done. The Games were constantly in her thoughts, no matter how much she tried to shut them out; there was no escaping the memory of the arena, except one which she was not prepared to take. She was not going to end up like Autumn or any of the other victors who depended on drugs or alcohol to help them cope.

In the last few weeks, she had often found herself looking at young children and wondering if she would have to mentor them in around ten years' time. That was one of the hardest aspects of being a victor, knowing you would have to take a hand in coaching future tributes, knowing most of the tributes you mentored would end up dying in the arena. Ruth wondered how she would deal with that, especially if the tribute concerned happened to be someone she knew well. But she had no choice in the matter; every victor was expected to do their share of mentoring, unless they were so psychologically damaged that they could not perform this duty.

During the day, she tried to fill her time with various activities to keep her mind off the arena as much as possible; Demmie hoped one of these activities could be developed into Ruth's talent, the skill she would take up instead of getting a job in the grain industry. At night, however, with nothing to distract her, images from the Games haunted her dreams. Not just the Games in which she had been a tribute, but every Hunger Games she had ever seen. As a result, she began to dread going to sleep, knowing the nightmares that would inevitably follow.

And then there was the memory of the twenty-three tributes who had not survived, whose bodies lay mouldering in their respective graves. Even though she had only been directly responsible for the deaths of three of them, she felt guilty for being alive when they were not. If she had had the option, she would have pushed them all to the back of her mind and avoided thinking about them ever again, but she did not. In a few months' time, she would be taken on her Victory Tour, during which she would visit each district in turn and be paraded before the people to remind them of the Capitol's power. And, she knew from previous Victory Tours, the families of the dead tributes were always given a place of honour at the ceremony which took place in each district's main square.

Ruth gazed at her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She looked the same as she had before she went to the arena - light brown hair and hazel eyes, her body filled out again. There was nothing to indicate what she had been through just a few weeks earlier, nothing to indicate that she was alive at the expense of twenty-three lives. Except the dark patches under her eyes, the result of having her sleep disturbed by bad dreams night after night. She hoped it would get easier in time, but she doubted it ever would. Indeed, when Katie had tried to offer consolation after yet another nightmare, Ruth had rounded on her, something she had never done in her life before.

"What do you know about it?!" she had yelled at her sister. "Do you know what it's like to know the only reason you're alive is because twenty-three others are dead?! You've only ever seen the Games on television, so don't give me any of that crap about "understanding how I feel"!"

It was this more than anything that revealed how much being in the arena had changed Ruth. She and Katie had always been close and had rarely quarrelled when they were growing up, but now things were different. Before the Games, Ruth had been fairly even tempered, but, since returning home, she had often found herself flying into a rage at the slightest provocation. And one thing that was guaranteed to set her off was any mention of the Games in which she had been a tribute, so people had quickly learned not to question her about her experiences. It was the same with Ethan and Thalia; they did not like to discuss their Games either and she was beginning to understand why.

If only there was some way to erase the memory of the arena, to rid herself of the images which haunted her constantly. But there wasn't, at least not one that didn't involve her turning into another Autumn, constantly drunk and probably headed for an early grave. Hardly any of the victors, especially those who came from outside the Career districts, were physically or mentally sound; some, like Thalia, had lost parts of their anatomy, while others were so deeply traumatised that it was unlikely they would ever fully recover. And nor did the Capitol allow them to do so; instead, they forced all but the most severely damaged victors to mentor the next lot of tributes, and the next, and the next . . .

A sudden feeling of overwhelming rage at everything that had happened to her engulfed Ruth, made worse by the fact that she was powerless against the ones responsible. She grabbed the mirror off the wall and dashed it to pieces on the floor, then collapsed, sobbing. As the tears traced their way down her cheeks and her shoulders shook, she heard herself gasping out the words: "I'm sorry . . . so sorry . . ." Words addressed not only to the tributes who had died in this year's Games, but to all the youngsters (including those not yet born) who were destined to become victims of the Games in the future.

Victims. Almost everyone who ended up in the arena became one. Even if you didn't die physically, the Games could, in effect, kill the person you had been before. And, Ruth knew as she sat crying on the floor, she was just as much a victim as Lukas, Till and all the others. She might have the special status granted to all victors, have been rewarded with a grand house in the Victor's Village and a life of leisure, but the price was not one she would have paid willingly. In many ways, she was a victor in name only; all she had really done was outlive several other youngsters in a sadistic contest devised as a punishment for the failed rebellion. There was only one real winner in the Hunger Games - and that was the Capitol. She and all the others who got out of the arena alive were nothing but tools in the oppression of their people.

Would there ever be an end? Would there ever come a time when the youngsters of Panem could grow up in a society free from the cruelty of the Capitol, where they did not have to face the prospect of becoming tributes in the Games? Those were questions that could not be answered - yet.


End file.
